


Book 3 - Chloe

by missyay



Series: Bargaining With the Universe [3]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bullying, Chloe Price Stayed at Blackwell, F/F, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Save Chloe Price Ending, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22697893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missyay/pseuds/missyay
Summary: Chloe, true to form, finger guns her. “That’s my secret superpower. Showing my love without getting all mushy about it. Watch and learn, kiddos.”
Relationships: Rachel Amber/Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Series: Bargaining With the Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1574962
Comments: 81
Kudos: 198





	1. Watch and Learn

**Author's Note:**

> The last leg of the journey! This time with an actual road trip, I promise. Thank you for sticking with me!

Chloe catches Kate easily enough, because Kate is an actual angel who lights up like a Christmas tree every time she sees Chloe and never passes up an opportunity to talk to her.

When Chloe passes her by in the hallway on the way to math, she almost stumbles over her own feet in her haste to stop and backtrack to say, “Hi, Chloe! How are you doing?” 

There’s still that thrill she feels when Kate shows any interest in her at all - like pride, mixed in with the warmth Chloe is certain Kate inspires in everyone she talks to, because she has an insanely nice voice. She gives her a smile.

“Eh, kind of tired. But like in a good way,” she says. “How about you?”

“I’m great. What’s wrong, do you have trouble falling asleep?” 

Chloe decides to take the opportunity then.

“It’s a bit of a longer story. Why don’t we meet up one of these days? We could do a proper tea party, Max and Rachel want to come along, too.” Even as she says them, the words feel fake, but it’s as close to the truth as she can get without spilling it all right here in the hallway, with Victoria lingering suspiciously at the edge of her vision.

Kate looks confused, but not outright rejected, which Chloe considers a victory. “Sure. We’ve still both got that free period on Wednesday, right?”

They do, but Rachel doesn’t. Sucks to be her, Chloe decides, she had to invite herself along, now she has to face the consequences.

*

Wednesday finds Chloe awake at 6, because fuck her, apparently this is important to her. Last time she woke up in the dark was because she’d slept away the entire day after Max had had a particularly bad night.

She gets up and is already halfway to the stereo when she realizes that maybe it’s not the wisest choice to wake up Joyce on the one day of the year that she’s awake before her.

Instead, her feet take her to the bag she keeps her love letters in. It’s a mess, because of who Chloe is as a person, so she doesn’t even try to find a particular one. Taking one out at random and reading it has become a habit, and sometimes she takes them with her to Blackwell and lets Max or Rachel read them, or she throws them out if they’re just too embarrassing.

This one is actual ink on stiff paper, but that doesn’t have to mean anything. Chloe writes on whatever is available, with whatever is available. She sits down on her bed and unfolds it.

_ August 21st, 2013 _

_ Oh man, Max. Why am I this way. _

_ To catch you up on your life: You moved back to Blackwell like a week ago. I didn’t think we could pick up right where we left off given our history (and given that I got instructions from you but you don’t remember, and given that I’m constantly writing love letters to you that I can’t let you see) but fuck it, we fucking did. Fewer pirates and more ice cream, but not much else changed. With Rachel gone for the summer, it feels a lot like you just never left. _

_ You’re a pretty damn good friend, Max. When you let yourself.  _

_ And it’s not like it came out of nowhere. I’ve been noticing the way you look at me. I hear what you say. And maybe I’ve never seen this kind of smile on you but I can extrapolate from incomplete data just fine. _

_ So why didn’t I do anything? _

_ Why didn’t I fucking tell you about Rachel Amber like a normal best friend? _

_ (Because I don’t know how. I don’t know where to start. It already took you a week to cope with the gay thing.) _

_ (Because it’s flattering. Because a part of me doesn’t want you to stop flirting.) _

_ Well.  _

_ We went for ice cream today (as we do almost every day since you’ve come back - we have a lot to catch up on) and you know: it was one of those days where everything seems possible, with the cloudless sky, the wind tugging at us. I was so grateful to have you. It felt almost like being whole again - it’s almost over, I just have to hold out until October. I just have to not let the world end. Easy. (It felt easy then.) _

_ We were talking about - I want to say inconsequential things, but I know it wasn’t. It was banter, old in-jokes we had dug up because we could, but there was so much love in the air that it felt significant, somehow. _

_ And then you kissed me. In between two bites of ice cream, just like that. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.  _

_ I wish I could say that I gently pushed you away, that I explained to you why we couldn’t. That I was nice about it.  _

_ But I just stood there, like an idiot.  _

_ It’s not even that I didn’t see it coming. I knew where you were going with this as soon as you turned towards me. Something about the set of your mouth. You can be very determined, when you set your mind to something. _

_ Here we were, and this was an option, had always been an option, and me too blind to see it. _

_ (And then there’s Rachel, and I know that I love her.) _

_ But for a split second, I saw this possibility too, like people see their lives flash before their eyes just before they die, I saw a possible future, in bits and pieces:  _

_ More of these vaguely sticky ice cream kisses. Stolen moments in between lessons. Your voice, finally as full of love as it was during that one phone call years ago, but with none of the longing. Being enough - finally, finally being enough for you, and having your full attention on me. I know how that feels: electric. Thrilling. _

_ But then, when you come back, what? Would we just carry on? Would you even know what happened? Would you even love me like that? And in any case: where would Rachel be, in this scenario? Quietly furious? Of course she would be. I know she said she’d back off if it turned out the one I’d been waiting for loved me back, but I also know by now that she’s not that indulgent. _

_ You pulled back and went back to your ice cream, like you do. Made me think of displacement activities. _

_ “I’m seeing Rachel,” I blurted out.  _

_ “Oh,” you said. It sounded small. You were probably comparing yourself to her in your mind right now. (It’s what I would have done. Nobody holds up against Rachel terribly well.) _

_ “I’m sorry,” I said. _

_ “It’s okay.” _

_ I stood there for a second wondering if I should hug you, and then I decided, to hell with it, this is as good a moment as any to grow a spine, so I just did. _

_ You do that thing when I hug you where you kind of scratch at my back a little bit - never figured out why, but it’s very you - and you did that then, and I knew that we would survive it. It may be painful, but our friendship would be stronger for it. _

_ Man, Max. I’m sorry. This could have gone so much better. And there’s a chance I’ll have to do it again in a few weeks’ time.  _

_ I promise I’ll be better about it then. Quicker, if nothing else. Like a bandaid.  _

_ Love  _

_ Chloe. _

Huh. Been awhile since she’s thought about that one. She pockets it, not sure if she wants to show it to anyone, yet. Maybe once Kate knows, she can talk to her about it. Minus the time traveling.

Chloe makes her way downstairs in the dark. It feels weirdly fitting that she keep the house dark as well as quiet.

She doesn’t spend a lot of time without listening to something or someone, usually, so the dark and silent house feels almost eerie, the fridge the only source of light when she opens it.

She prepares breakfast for Joyce, too - if you can call an empty bowl and a spoon preparation - and eats hers in record time. She feels like she’s racing someone, or something, possibly her heart on its way into her throat. 

Joyce comes downstairs when Chloe is rinsing her bowl, hair sticking up in different directions and a bewildered look on her face. It sits weirdly on yesterday’s makeup.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, and Chloe tries a disbelieving laugh. 

“What, I can’t wake up on time once in my life?”

“Not without a good reason. I know my daughter. What happened?” Joyce makes her way to the table, takes in the clean bowl and spoon Chloe set out for her, and gives her a smile that does nothing to diminish the question hanging between them.

Chloe sighs. “I’ve got a - talk coming up. With a good friend. That I’m not sure how it’ll go.”

“Max?” Joyce asks, pouring herself some cereal. Chloe pulls a face; it feels like Joyce has been pointedly calling Max her  _ friend  _ much more often lately. “No.”

“What’s with that face? Did you get into a fight with Max?” Joyce immediately asks, somehow apparently seeing Chloe’s frown through her turned back. She sounds worried. She’s always loved Max a ridiculous amount.

“No, we’re still getting along like a house on fire, don’t worry.” This time, Chloe actively tries to transfer her eye roll into her voice as she stows the bowl into the dishwasher. “We’re still on for the road trip. She’ll be there for the talk today, too, as like emotional support.”

“Oh, good,” Joyce slurs through a mouthful of cereal. “No reason to worry, then.” 

Sometimes, Chloe is terrified of what would happen if Joyce realized what Max  _ really  _ is capable of. She might build her an actual shrine. Other times, she thinks she would probably just shrug and say she knew it all along. It would be nice to have that kind of blind faith aimed at herself, sometimes.

She goes back upstairs to scrub her face and throw on some clothes, grabs her bag and heads out. 

Joyce catches her on the way to the door to give her a hug. “Don’t worry,” she says again, into Chloe’s shoulder. Somehow, it actually makes her feel calmer.

“Ugh,” Chloe replies, but she gives Joyce the smallest smile as she extricates herself. “Have a good day at work,” she calls back into the house just before the door closes.

When she gets out of the truck, she has a new text from Joyce that just reads  **Thank you, have a good day at school!!!!**

She sighs loudly, even though there is nobody to fool. 

*

There’s nobody really around on the school grounds - both Max and Rachel have perfected the art of being exactly on time, even though it seems like more of a feat with Rachel - but when Chloe heads over to the Biology classroom to see if it’s already open, she finds Kate sitting in front of it with her feet pulled up and a notebook on her knees, doodling away. 

Chloe remembers vaguely that Kate is a morning person, she’s just never seen the peaceful expression on her face in person before. She sits down next to her heavily and heaves a deep, weary sigh to announce her presence. “Oh my God, Kate, how do you do this shit every day. I’m already exhausted.”

Kate looks up smiling, then sets down her pen and leans into Chloe for a sideways hug. Chloe pats her head a few times. “I just like mornings. It’s so nice and quiet and unhurried.”

Only through the sheer force of Kate’s personality does the statement not sound pointed, and Chloe grins. “Well, say goodbye to all that, because for  _ some reason _ I woke up at six today and I have never met any of those adjectives.”

“That’s okay, I get to spend more time with you instead,” Kate replies instantly, because she just  _ says shit like that _ , and immediately tilts her notebook towards Chloe when she tries to sneak a peek. It’s owls and deer today, rendered in soft pastel hues. 

“Awww,” Chloe says, and leaves it to Kate to assign it to the drawing or the compliment.

There’s something about Kate that makes it hard to worry about whether she will still like her when she knows. Perhaps her particular brand of affection, unconditional and absolute. 

Maybe things will be awkward for a while, but ultimately Chloe knows in that moment, leaning into Kate’s shoulder as she continues coloring her sketches, that she doesn’t need to worry.

*

Rachel and Max, true to form, show up about two minutes before the bell rings. They stroll into the classroom arm in arm, and Chloe feels a sharp pang of something. She leans over to Kate to pencil the tiniest hedgehog onto her desk. 

Kate doesn’t waste any time doodling her a bunny into the very corner of her notebook page in return. Its hilariously long ears shape a heart around it. 

Kate rips out the page and hands it over, and the feeling eases a bit.

When she looks up, Rachel is looking at her, head tilted sideways. She has put her hair up today, an artfully disheveled bun that she knows Chloe loves and that makes her earring stand out even more than usual. Rachel catches her eye and then blows her a kiss with an exaggerated gesture. Chloe makes a show of snatching it out of the air and stuffing it into her mouth, which in turn makes Max shake with silent laughter. 

_ Don’t worry _ , Joyce said. Chloe makes an effort not to. Life’s good. She’s got the two most stunning girlfriends in the world, and that they also have each other is a feature, not a bug.

She breathes through the last of the jealousy and blows kisses back to her girlfriends just as the bell rings. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Kate watching her, but when she turns to face her, there’s only mild curiosity on her face. She angles a wide smile at her, and Kate smiles back before focusing on the lesson.

*   
  


“So,” Kate says after handing them all their teacups, “What’s been happening in your lives lately?”

This time, it does sound pointed, but it is almost an amused point, not an annoyed one.

Rachel looks from her to Chloe to Max in rapid succession, and then back at Kate with a conspiratorial smile. Chloe isn’t sure what’s happening but she’s reasonably sure it means good things.

“Uhhh well about that,” Chloe starts, and Rachel grins widely enough to make her falter. Not that she knows what she was about to say.

When she looks back at Kate, she’s also smiling, although she makes it look more encouraging and less smug.

She shares a shrug with Max, who looks as clueless as she feels, and decides to move on. What the hell. Max can rewind it if it doesn’t come out right, and take over herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Max slightly raise one hand in a gesture that Chloe recognizes as  _ ready to rewind _ . It’s both weird and weirdly comforting.

“I’m starting to get the feeling that you already know where I’m going with this,” Chloe ventures. Rachel nods at her to continue. “Um,” she says, “we’re a thing. The three of us. We’re in a relationship toge—”

_ “ — egot pihsnoitaler a ni er’eW .su fo eerht ehT .gniht a er’ew“ ,syas ehs ”,mU“ .eunitnoc ot reh ta sdon lehcaR _

Rachel nods at her to continue, but Chloe’s peripheral vision snags on something her brain has come to interpret as a warning sign: Max is raising her hand to her nose.

Chloe turns around to her: She rewound, something must have gone wrong, but Max isn’t doing anything to course-correct - 

Max shakes her head at her, motioning for her to move on with the hand that isn’t currently digging for a tissue in her jeans pocket. She looks - embarrassed. 

She must have rewound on accident, out of sheer stress. Chloe shakes her head back at Max, grinning. 

Max finishes wiping the blood off her upper lip and subsequently exes her cup of scalding hot tea in an effort to avoid eye contact. Chloe winces in sympathy, but Max doesn’t even pull a face, so the embarrassment must hurt worse.

When she looks back, both Kate and Rachel are looking at her - Kate with something like worry, Rachel with a fondness that almost hurts for how undiluted it is.

“Um,” she says with a laugh. Out with it. Like a bandaid. “Sorry. This is all super embarrassing and I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page. But I think we are. So. We’re a thing. The three of us. We’re all in a relationship.”

There’s a part of Chloe that doesn’t want to wait for the judgment after the end of that sentence. That’s also the part that wants to set down her cup of tea, and to laugh, and to get up, and to sneer. 

It’s a very loud part of her, but, Chloe realizes in that moment, it’s also very small. The rest of her is much stronger, and it wants to take a sip of tea and take in everyone’s faces because honestly, they are priceless. 

Kate’s face is trying to look like  _ I knew it all along _ but it’s also still halfway to  _ holy shit wow.  _

Max’s expression is suspended in that moment before relief sets in, not quite daring to yet - as if this is the first time she’s seen this. Apparently some things you don’t get used to. Apparently this is one of them.

Rachel’s face is just pure glee. When their eyes meet, her smile, impossibly, widens. Chloe leans back and crosses her legs and waits out the silence: something, she realizes, she doesn’t do enough.

Kate, very slowly, sets down her cup of tea. Her expression has managed to leave _ holy shit wow  _ behind. “I was thinking something like this might be happening,” she finally says. It sounds delicate, and Chloe usually hates when people talk to her like this - like she will explode if they don’t, almost making their discomfort her problem. It makes her want to explode on principle.

Chloe breathes through the instinct, because Kate is just trying her best to be the absolute kindest version of herself she can be. 

Then Kate laughs for a few seconds too long, and while she watches Rachel’s smile twitch into something sharper, something in Chloe  _ flips  _ like a switch. 

Oh, no. 

She’s overwhelmed.

Whatever assumptions Kate was harboring had never been verbal, never had she been under any obligations to put a word to it, and now that Chloe made her, she’s  _ overwhelmed _ . 

She’s going to be nice about it, but she will shut the door behind them when they’re gone and breathe a sigh of relief. 

She’s going to stop texting her when she’s sad.

There won’t be any more graffoodles. 

It’s going to be like this every goddamn time they come out to someone, Chloe suddenly realizes. 

This is their life now.

She gets up.

“God, what’s even the point? Let’s leave,” she says, and Kate’s eyes snap to her face, hurt obvious in her expression, and  _ how dare she.  _ How dare she make her pain Chloe’s problem, when Chloe always takes such care to conceal her own, keep it to herself-

_ -flesreh ot ti peek ,nwo reh laecnoc ot erac hcus sekat syawla eolhC nehw ,melborp s’eolhC niap reh ekam ehs erad woH .ehs erad woh dna ,noisserpxe reh ni suoivbo truh ,ecaf reh ot pans seye s’etaK dna ,syas ehs ”,evael s’teL ?tniop eht neve s’tahw ,doG“ _

_.pu steg ehS _

_.won efil rieht si sihT _

_ .sezilaer ylneddus eolhC ,enoemos ot tuo emoc yeht emit nmaddog yreve siht ekil eb ot gniog _

“That’s okay. Take your time,” Max says. Kate stops laughing and hides her face in her hands for a moment. “You get to take all the time you need to get used to this. No need to rush yourself through the steps.”

She’s still holding her empty teacup, but her other hand is suddenly resting on Chloe’s thigh, palm up. Chloe rests her own hand on top of it, palm down, careful not to hold it. It’s weird, she thinks, how Max apparently got away with this rewind, when she got a nosebleed for her troubles earlier. Almost like there’s an opinion attached to it, like whatever benevolent entity granted her these powers also has ideas about how she should use them. (What a strange theory. Her inner scientist wants to test it out immediately.)

Kate, when she emerges, is bright pink and very obviously looking at their hands on Chloe’s lap. “No, I want to,” she says. “You deserve it. I shouldn’t let my upbringing stop me from telling you,” she takes a fortifying breath, “how cute you all are together.”

And the thing is.

There’s a strain to it when she says it, but Chloe knows there’s love behind it.

So she decides, for once in her life, to leave it.

“Thanks!” That’s Rachel, who has decided no such thing. She kisses Chloe, then Max on the cheeks, big showy smacking kisses, leaning across Chloe to reach Max. And Chloe knows that Rachel always knows exactly how carefully to tread with people. This smells like a tiny amount of spite. Possibly more than a tiny amount.

There’s a dangerous sparkle in Rachel’s eyes, one that says:  _ I’m willing to burn down this building for my love, and how dare you be  _ delicate  _ about it. _

“Yes, thank you,” Chloe says. There’s an uncomfortable realization sitting in the back of her mind - that Max won’t jump in this time, she doesn’t know  _ how.  _ It takes time to stop saying  _ yes _ and  _ thank you _ to every decision Rachel makes. “I know how hard this must be, getting rid of all the stereotypes that everyone has taught you all your life in such a short time. Thank you for making the effort.” It sounds stilted as she says it, but it’s the best she can do: Chloe is not used to talking feelings. She usually tries to make do with jokes and affectionate insults.

Kate, in an unexpected turn of events, turns around and throws her arms around her.

“No, of course I’ll put in the effort. You’ve been so kind and so patient with me about all this, it’s time I returned the favor.”

Huh. 

Chloe has never really seen it as an effort, but it’s starting to make sense now: checking in with Kate on a regular basis, inviting her for tea at least once a week no matter if Kate returned the favor. Making sure to shower her in compliments to prevent her from getting sad. Inviting her to text when she did get sad, and talking her through it. She  _ has  _ been a good friend to Kate. But more importantly: Kate has seen this and knows what it means and she’s willing to work on getting over herself to keep Chloe as close as they have been.

Awkwardly patting her back, Chloe says, “You’ve got some time to get used to the idea, with the Christmas break coming up.” Over Kate’s shoulder, Chloe makes a face at Rachel that hopefully says  _ reel it back in _ with some amount of sternness. Rachel dims her smile from  _ outright threatening _ to  _ vaguely concerning _ in response. It’ll have to do. 

“Oh? Are you guys leaving?” Kate asks.

Chloe leans out of her embrace and puts her arms around Rachel and Max’s shoulders. “Road trip to Max’s parents.”

  
“Oh that’s right, they’re in…”

“Seattle,” Max provides, sounding weirdly flat. “Are you gonna find someone to feed Alice while you’re gone?”

Kate pauses at the mention of her pet rabbit, clearly not expecting Max to remember her name. “Seattle, right, I’m so sorry for forgetting. Um, I’m going to stay here this year.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Max asks, immediately. “Is it your mom?”

Kate turns to her, surprise on her face. She gives it a few seconds of silence, but Max doesn’t make a move to backtrack. Finally, she nods. “Yes. To both. She’s been - kind of cold, lately, and hanging out with you guys - “ she includes Rachel in the smile she gives them at that, which brings Rachel’s expression down to normal levels of intensity. She’s not immune to flattery at all, Chloe knows this well. “ - just kind of made me realize that showing your love isn’t that hard. Even if you’re not the type to show love with words or physical affection.”

With that, she looks straight at Chloe. Chloe, true to form, finger guns her. “That’s my secret superpower. Showing my love without getting all mushy about it. Watch and learn, kiddos.”


	2. Teaming up on the Trash Front

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Some bullying happens throughout this chapter.

The last week before Christmas break creeps up on Chloe in a flurry of Christmas gift shopping, last minute preparation for tests, and making checklists of what kinds of rewind give Max a bloody nose (the powers that be don’t seem to mind cheating and other mildly chaotic shenanigans, she notes, while they do appear to have strong opinions on them continuing to hide their relationship.)

She barely has the time to (on Joyce’s orders, with Joyce’s money) get the truck fixed up enough to survive the road trip, plan the stops, and convince Joyce that really, it’s okay, and anyway, Max is there, so what could even go wrong? (It works, and once more Chloe wonders if Max’s real superpower isn’t that she is the child all parents wish they had.)

All of them are ridiculously busy, which means it’s no wonder none of them see it coming, even though they should have.

On Monday morning, Chloe enters the women’s bathroom and immediately comes face to face with a lipstick-red _MAX FUCKS CHLOE AND RACHEL_ across her reflection’s face. Some variation of it is on every mirror. Chloe has already raised her hand to erase it, almost on reflex, when the door opens and Dana comes in.

Chloe lets her hand sink. Erasing it now feels like denying their relationship, and she’s sick and tired of doing that. So she just watches Dana through the mirror, the angry red words between them. _Say something, I dare you._

But Dana just nods at her with something that almost feels like sympathy, and Chloe suddenly remembers the incident with her and Juliet and that they have both stopped talking to Victoria. And the smear campaign that followed. She nods back, solemn. 

After Dana has disappeared into one of the cubicles, Chloe glares at the two mirrors next to hers that say _RACHEL AMBER IS A WHORE_ and _CHLOE PRICE IS A CHEATER_ , and turns on her heel to find her girlfriends.

*

She finds Max first and proceeds to spend most of the English lesson they share whisper-telling her the story. Max reacts mostly by rolling her eyes so hard Chloe is worried they’ll get stuck that way, which shouldn’t surprise Chloe but does. 

“Want me to do something about it?” Max finally asks, nonchalant.

“Uh,” Chloe says, stumped. “Let’s wait what Rachel has to say.” 

Max shrugs.

When Victoria turns around to them and gives them a nasty grin, Max only stares back wordlessly. Chloe has to turn away after a few seconds at the sight of Max’s expressionless face, and Victoria doesn’t fare much better, but she hisses something in their direction first that Warren in front of them obviously catches, because his eyes go round and he turns around to them as well. 

This time, Chloe is the one to meet his gaze. She does her flattest _what._ expression, and Warren quickly turns back with an apologetic grimace.

“Thanks,” Max, who has been suspiciously buried in her notes until this point, mumbles in her direction. 

It’s going to be okay. She has two sisters in arms. It’ll blow over. They only have to endure one week of this and then everyone will forget over Christmas.

Warren catches Max’s arm when they make their way out of class, and Chloe can only hear his hurried, “Listen Max I am so sorry about earlier, I know it’s none of my business and uh I didn’t mean to imply that you can’t date whomever you want—” before she’s out of earshot, Max waving her away with a slightly pinched expression. Warren has been following her around like a puppy for awhile, and something in Max’s slightly impatient reaction tells Chloe this isn’t the first reality in which Warren has developed a crush on her.

Chloe finds Rachel in their usual spot, perched on the fountain, shoulders hunched.

Of course. Rachel knows when people are staring at her, and she knows when it’s out of admiration. 

“I’m so sorry, Rach,” she says, leaning into a side-hug as she sits down next to her. She would usually plant a kiss on her cheek too, but people are watching and Rachel looks like she might shatter on any kind of impact.

“What’s going _on?”_ Rachel asks, sounding small.

Chloe should have seen it coming. Rachel has absolutely no experience being anything less than admired.

“Have you been to the bathroom today?” she asks, and Rachel shakes her head, quizzical.

“Well, _someone_ , let’s not say any names, possibly called _Victoria Chase_ , wrote some nasty shit on the mirrors. About us. And Max.”

Rachel stares.

“Like what?” she finally asks, disbelieving. “Rachel Amber has _two_ stunning girlfriends instead of one, like originally suspected? What a _burn._ ”

Chloe laughs. That’s more like her Rachel. “Yeah, it’s all pretty dumb. We haven’t done anything about it yet because we were waiting to confirm, kind of… if we’re denying this or not.”

Rachel takes a deep breath. Then another. Because that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s been the question for a while now.

“Whatever,” she finally says. “Better out than in, right?”

“That’s right,” Chloe says, and lets out a breath. 

“In that case, do you have some lipstick on you, because I’ve got some stuff to say.”

It turns out Rachel has not one, but two shades of red on her, so they make their way to the nearest bathroom arm in arm and get to work together. 

When Chloe looks up from turning _RACHEL AMBER IS A FREAK_ into _RACHEL AMBER IS A FREAKING GENIUS_ and sees that Rachel has added a _what a lucky girl she is_ to the one that says _MAX FUCKS RACHEL AND CHLOE_ , she thinks, _It’s going to be okay._

*

It’s not okay.

The next day, it’s screenshots from their group chat. They don’t figure it out until Warren tells them, red-faced, what has been going on: Apparently, everyone has been sending them out to each other, excluding them, and whispering about it when they’re out of earshot. Sometimes not even that.

That’s the thing that gets Chloe riled up like nothing else. They don’t even have the courtesy to wait until they’re out of earshot, and most of them are people who got along _fine_ with Rachel and Max at least - Chloe knows hers is not an easy personality to like. But they gossip _at them_ , daring them to react, and Chloe pulls Rachel and Max aside during break. 

“I’m not sure if I can hold out until the end of the day without punching someone on the nose,” she says, eyeing Juliet who is pointing at them from where she’s standing with her friends.

“Me neither,” Rachel says. She’s been white-faced, thin-lipped all day, not just since Warren showed them the picture of what’s essentially nothing more saucy than simple flirting, interspersed with bickering (because no chat that Chloe participates in survives without a healthy dose of bickering). “Victoria is going down first.”

Victoria has been quietly gloating all day. The only one who doesn’t seem unnerved by this is Max. “How do you keep this calm?” Chloe asks her, and she shakes her head. 

“I’ve lived through every single mean thing she has to say,” she tells them. “At some point, it gets boring. You know what’s radical? Being _kind_ to people.”

Rachel shrugs. “Yeah, but it still hurts.”

“You want me to talk to her?” Max asks again, with that slight emphasis on _talk_ that gives Chloe goosebumps. 

“Let’s wait out today, then we take her aside,” Chloe says before Rachel can open her mouth. She puts her own slight emphasis on the _we._

“Fine by me,” Max says, and Rachel nods.

Kate joins them a few minutes later, looking almost too sorry for Chloe to bear. “I just heard what happened,” she says. She still looks vaguely uncomfortable around them, like she thinks she’s interrupting something. “Have you considered taking this to a teacher?”

Rachel laughs. “Hey, Ms. Grant, I was wondering if you could help me out here? I’m in a triad with these two girls and a mean classmate stole screenshots from our private chat and is sending them around?”

Max cuts in. “We’re kind of hoping to keep this from the parents until we’re ready to tell them.”

Kate nods, emphatic. “I feel you. I’ve kept tons of things from my parents.”

“Yeah?” Chloe asks. “Like what?”

She needs some distraction from this bullshit, stat. Kate seems to get that immediately.

“Like when I was talking to this guy, Phil - not even flirting! I wouldn’t even know where to start! But we were talking, sharing art, he did these impressive silhouette-y paintings, all black and white and one pop of color… I mean, I thought he was great, obviously. Can’t imagine what my mother would say.”

“Yeah?”

She laughs. “He had blue hair and piercings. Nobody in my family would have been thrilled.” There’s a brief pause. “Obviously it petered out anyway when I moved out here.”

Chloe wonders what it would be like, to have to actively keep such benign things secret from her mother. She’s not even trying that hard with this thing. She vows, for the thousandth time, to be more grateful for Joyce.

“You should reach out to him.” That’s Max, smiling softly. “He sounds like a great guy, it would be a shame to let him go without even trying, right?”

Kate looks between them, their defiantly linked hands. 

“Is it worth it?” she asks, and isn’t that just a blow to the stomach.

“Yes,” Rachel says, immediately, and Chloe turns to look at her. She’s bright-eyed, angry in that way she gets when she sees something as a threat to someone she loves. “Every goddamn day. Of course today isn’t a picnic, but we’ll get over it. We’ll just stuff Victoria into a few trash cans after school. It’ll be fine.”

“Joking,” Max adds at Kate’s vaguely disturbed look. 

There’s always been an unease between Kate and Rachel, something that seems to be perceived as a rivalry by Rachel and the healthy amount of distance anyone would keep from a jealous Rachel Amber on the other. Today, Kate takes a step towards Rachel and seems to breathe through her fear. “Well, if you need another hand with that trash can,” she says, and Rachel breaks out into surprised laughter.

Chloe remembers that Victoria used to pick on Kate, too, and gives her a solemn nod. “We’ll let you know.”

It’ll be fine.

*

It’s not fine. 

Because on day three, Victoria puts up copies of the letter Chloe stuffed into her backpack on the day they went to talk to Kate. 

They’re fucking _everywhere._ Pinned to the bulletin boards, stuck to the fronts of their lockers, on the doors of all classrooms. The first one she finds is stapled to a tree near the parking lot: Chloe parks the freshly prepped truck, gets out and practically comes face to face with it immediately. 

She freezes, heart sinking. _No._

_No no no no please no—_ she pockets it, and tears down all the others around the place, too, but it’s too late, because Chloe is always late to first class, and she can’t even count on Rachel and Max to have torn down the others. She checks her phone: Radio silence. 

Being late has the benefit of not meeting anyone on the way to school except the security people, who don’t look too judgy as Chloe marches across the school grounds, tearing down the letters wherever she can reach them. 

What’s even the point, she thinks as she frees everyone’s lockers in passing: They’ve already seen them. She just knows that she can’t bear to be around them with other people present - she feels naked, almost. Like one of those nightmares where you go to school and realize you forgot your clothes, and then you keep trying to put on some clothes but somehow never manage to focus on the task long enough to actually do it.

For a moment, Chloe wonders if this _is_ a nightmare. It certainly feels like it, the quality of stress, and how eerie the absence of other people suddenly is— but that would be too good to be true, and so Chloe moves on.

She shares first lesson with Kate only, and she’s not sure if she can bear her pity right now, but any other option feels worse, so she slinks into class mumbling an apology and sits down on her chair.

Kate immediately slides her a note, and Chloe sighs and resigns herself to the beginning of what will probably be a very long day of explaining herself - except when she unfolds the paper, she finds the prickliest, angriest bunny she’s ever seen, rendered in broad strokes of pencil, murder in its eyes and a bulging plastic bag in one paw, the squiggly lines above which suggest a strong smell. _NEED ANY HELP TAKING OUT THE TRASH?_ it says, and Chloe laughs, so relieved it almost hurts.

Halfway through first lesson, Max sends her a text. **I’ve got a picture from last week I could travel back to, to stop this from happening, if you want.**

It’s about half an hour late, as a temptation. **Are we still on for giving Victoria a Talking To? Because I’d like to try that first** she texts back.

**I would love to give Victoria some feedback ^_~** is Max’s vaguely unsettling reply, immediately followed by **Rachel is on board, too**

Chloe breathes out for the first time in what feels like hours. She spends the rest of the lesson doodling a hedgehog with a tiny battleaxe leading its motley gang of friends (said prickly bunny, a doe with worryingly sharp teeth and an owl going in for a dive, claws first) into battle. _LET’S TEAM UP ON THE TRASH FRONT_ she scrawls underneath and hands it over to Kate, who gives her a solemn nod.

Just when the bell rings, she gets another text, this time from Warren, of all people. **If you guys need a sidekick talking to Victoria hmu** , and Chloe spends five extra minutes rendering the meanest red panda she can draw and adding it to the crew.

**I’ll take you up on that** ** _,_ **she texts back and attaches the picture with hastily scrawled names, and gets back a string of delighted smiley faces (ugh).

When she finally packs up her stuff and starts leaving, Max and Rachel are waiting for her at the classroom door to escort her out, with Kate hanging back a few feet, like she wants to give them privacy. 

They’re silent, but Chloe is reasonably sure that most of the quiet rage she finds in both of their stances and expressions is not directed at her. She’d still rather they said something.

But then again, she’s the one who needs to explain herself.

“I was gonna tell you guys,” she says. “That’s why I was carrying that letter around in the first place, I was waiting for a good time to tell you.”

“I figured,” Rachel replies airily. “I would have loved to find out about it like, in a slightly different way? But I’m with you, here. I’m with you and I’m enraged and I’m ready to reduce Victoria Chase to absolutely _nothing_.”

“Damn, I’d like to see that.” That’s - Steph’s voice from behind them, oh. They haven’t really talked in ages, but Chloe has felt a kinship with her ever since she admitted to having a crush on Rachel ages ago. 

That she chooses to show alliance now only serves to strengthen the sense of kinship. Without turning around, Chloe holds up a hand for Steph, and receives a slightly awkward high five. “Then join us. Kate and Warren are coming, too. What’s your patronus?”

Steph steps between them like she does this every day, absolutely unperturbed by the non-sequitur. “Sure, I’m in. That bitch has had it coming for a while now. A swan, why?”

Chloe stops then and there to add an angry swan to the doodle. She doesn’t even need to give it eyebrows, because swans are always raging, and this one has ducked its head down low and its wings spread halfway, so Victoria is already as good as dead.

She flips the paper around to show Steph, who whistles. 

“Well, then,” Max says. “Let’s pick up Warren by the fountain and find Victoria.”

And so they do.

*

Victoria looks up when they advance, and only shrinks back a tiny bit for a second at the sight of the six of them. She’s perched on the steps to the girls’ dormitory as per usual, Taylor and Courtney by her side.

“Oh, look at that, have you guys picked up more lovers already?”

Courtney and Taylor laugh dutifully.

“Of course,” Rachel says airily. She looks like she wants to say more, but Max is closing in, ready to take over.

“Listen, Victoria, I know that you lost the two people you trusted most when Nathan and Jefferson had to leave, but honestly trusting people who turn out to be potential murderers and kidnappers should be enough to make you question your judgment, I would have thought? But here you are again, spreading rumors and outing people against their will. How does it feel? Does it make you feel better? Is it a _nice feeling?”_

Victoria looks from Max, who sits down on the stairs below her like she doesn’t have a care in the world, to the rest of them, who are showing different types and degrees of rage.

Finally, she opens her mouth. “What is this, an intervention?! What’s even your problem? If you don’t think it’s dirty, why do you care if everyone knows you have the hots for each other?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Max says, quietly. 

“What do you care how I feel?! You didn’t seem to care when you were pitting Dana and Juliet against me!” Victoria is looking down at Max now, chin up, a disgusted curl to her lips.

“Because it was the fastest way to stop you from making fun of my _friend_. I know I should have taken the time to tell you in more detail, because apparently you’re the dumbest smart person I know, but you know what happens when you bully people? Sometimes, they kill themselves. And you don’t know which ones, and you don’t know when. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, not even you want to be famous for that.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?! Kate wouldn’t have killed herself just because I called her a nun. What’s your fucking problem, Maxine?” Victoria sounds brittle now, almost shrill.

“It’s Max,” Chloe corrects her automatically. 

Then, Kate steps out from between Warren and Chloe. She’s pale, shoulders hunched, but there’s a determined twist to her mouth. “Actually, if you’d done something like this to me? Posted something that personal for the entire world to see? I wouldn’t vouch for my life.”

There’s a split second where Victoria blanches and Chloe thinks, _now we have her_. But then she sits up straight, gives them a haughty look and says, “Well, it’s not _my_ fault if you don’t have a will to live. Don’t blame that on me. I’m here because I know how to fight, and you won’t stop me just because you like to play the victim.”

Max shrugs and turns away. “Call it what you want, but next time you expect me to _care_ when I ruin one of your friendships, remember this moment. Remember that I tried. I asked you how you felt and you refused to answer. I tried to make you see my side and you blocked me. If you want war? You can have it. But this is a warning. There’s more of us every day, and every time you run one of your dirty little _schemes_ you will lose more people who are willing to listen to you. I’m willing to listen to you, but if all you give me is bullshit, I won’t waste my time with you.”

She gets up, and next to Rachel, Steph starts clapping slowly. Chloe joins, then Rachel, then Warren, and finally, Kate. Victoria looks at Courtney, then at Taylor, who are completely silent. She hunches her shoulders a little.

“Look at that, Victoria. I haven’t even talked to you yet and you’re already shivering. Do you want five more of these speeches, or do you want to help us take down the fucking letters?” Rachel asks, taking a step forward.

Max high fives her, like she’s handing over the baton. 

“Yeah,” Steph adds, “We all have our grievances, and we’ll make sure you hear them, one by one. Remember when you wrote _Steph is a dyke_ in all the toilet stalls after I came out? Because I do.”

When Rachel sits down in Max’s spot, smiling up at Victoria, she finally crumbles. “Fine. I’ll take down the letters and we’re even.”

“If by _even_ you mean if you pull the tiniest piece of bullshit, we will make sure it rains back onto you? Then yes,” Chloe says. Rachel gets back up again, dusting off her pants.

“Hey, Courtney, Taylor?” Max says as everyone is turning around to leave, and they look at her like deer in the headlights. “You seem like cool people, I admire your sense of fashion. If you ever want to hang out with people who know what loyalty is worth? Come to us.”

“I will make your lives _hell_ ,” Victoria hisses warningly, and Warren says, “huh, case in point, I guess. You know, normal friends don’t _threaten_ you to keep you by their sides. They do nice stuff, like draw you little pictures, or text you when they see something and it made them think of you. Share their food. You should try it sometime.”

And they leave. Rachel mimes a mic drop to Warren, who seems exceptionally pleased with himself. 

By the time Chloe goes home, the letters are gone.

She breathes out. Two more days.


	3. A Benevolent God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry, something came up yesterday, but better late than never, right? If you want to listen to Max's Playlist while reading, here it is: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/36iW3jzXdpDxf2DpSLRV42?si=uDx9DP2xTkGfvhIynGh6fg

Friday barely finds Chloe at all: It’s the last day of school, nothing of importance is going to happen, so she doesn’t see why she should go at all. Except maybe that Rachel and Max are depending on her to bring the truck for the road trip. 

Joyce finally just opens the curtains, gives the lump underneath the blanket that is her a hug, tells her to have a good time on the road trip, and leaves for work. Chloe curls up into a tighter ball.

The truth of the matter is that she’s worn out, and not telling Joyce about what has been going on at Blackwell fucks with her more than she thought it would.

Victoria has kept up an icy truce as promised, but there’s plenty of whispers and stares anyway, and it’s draining in a way Chloe thought she left behind when people finally got over her being a lesbian.

The thought of the road trip has kept her going this long, but Chloe has the creeping suspicion that it won’t solve everything: They’ll be stuck together in a confined space for days on end, and no amount of activities Rachel picked out for them to space out the time they spend on the road will cover up that they have some things to talk out still.

It’s a text from Max that finally rouses her: **Are you okay? óò**

 **no emojis!!!!** she texts back, more out of habit than anything else. **I’m fine. Overslept. Gonna be there by break,** and then she realizes that she needs to hurry up if she really wants to make that happen. 

She shovels cereal into her mouth in a speed even Joyce would disapprove of, and leaves the house with the rest of her luggage.

Max and Rachel are already awaiting her in the parking lot, ready to add their trolleys to hers in the trunk.

They look - subdued and tired, both of them, and Chloe knows how that feels: Like the stares and the whispering and the dumb graffiti you keep finding on your desks pull at you, like the planet has been collecting mass while you weren’t looking and now gravity is twice as strong, and you can’t keep up.

She makes a snap decision and snags Rachel for a hug when she comes by her side. “Okay. Get in. We’re bailing,” she says into the crown of her head.

“Fuck, _please,”_ Rachel mumbles into her shoulder. “I was ready to leave this town in _kindergarten.”_

“So we’re going now?” Max asks from the other side of the car, and Chloe nods. Rachel hugs her tighter.

Max uses that window to snag shotgun, and Rachel grumblingly concedes, untangling from Chloe and spreading her entire self out on the back seat instead. 

Max buckles up, then hands Chloe an honest-to-God- _cassette_ , because the truck doesn’t do CDs, and Chloe laughs and pops it into the player. 

As whatever indie band Max is listening to these days starts blaring, Chloe does a sloppy three point turn and leaves Blackwell behind. In the rear view mirror, she can see Rachel flip it the bird as it vanishes from view. Max, twisted around in the passenger seat to watch her, gives a delighted laugh, and Chloe realizes how long it’s been since she’s heard that particular sound - definitely not since Victoria started her little campaign. It already feels like they’re healing. Like they’re unfolding and finally taking up the space they’re due again.

The first leg of the journey is easy, she’s been to Grant’s Pass a couple of times - they have a nice view up there, and it’s a place that isn’t Arcadia Bay, so Chloe used to escape there when things got too much at home. And the route there practically brings them by the Oregon Caves, which are their first stop. She relaxes in the driver’s seat, giving Max and Rachel a quick glance each. They’re both smiling, Max silently mouthing the words of the song, Rachel has already gotten out nail polish the same shade of blue as her earring and is in the process of painting her nails. Chloe turns on the AC against the smell.

“You know what’s funny?” Max says eventually.

“What?” Rachel asks, holding out her right hand to inspect the freshly painted nails.

“We all missed each other’s first kisses. I missed mine with Chloe here, Chloe missed mine with her there, and you missed yours with me.”

Rachel laughs, and Chloe, relieved somebody who isn’t her addressed the elephant in the car, joins in. “We all missed out. We should tell each other how it was! Did I suck?”

Max shakes her head. “You were great,” she says. There’s enough of a pause in it to make Chloe question the statement, and Max seems to notice and sighs. “It was more that it was in the middle of a storm and everyone was dead or dying, and I had just seen you die again that kind of ruined the mood.” 

Chloe knows that this is the route that Max and her would have taken in the alternate reality where everything went to shit. There’s a lot of stuff on Max’s mind that she usually feels like she can’t talk about, and here she’s carved out this temporary space where she can. But for the life of her, she can’t think of a reply to that.

Luckily, they’re not the only people in this relationship.

Rachel, frozen in the attempt to unscrew the nail polish again for the left hand, pipes up: “So what was it like?”

Max pulls her feet out of her shoes and onto the seat, looking at Chloe like she dares her to say something. “Stormy,” she says. “Like we were making a promise. Like we’d sooner die than let go of each other.”

Chloe, not for the first time, has the weird experience of being jealous of an alternate version of herself. She shrugs it off, impatient.

“Would it have worked out, do you think?” she asks.

“God, no. You’re not made for the kind of proximity I would have needed after this kind of catastrophe. Losing everyone - you deal with things differently. We would have been at each other’s throats constantly.” Max bites one nail and mouths a few words of the current song - _Rewind, I wanna go it again, light up the dark, halo on the side -_ and then continues, more softly, “But we wouldn’t have let each other out of sight again.”

Chloe opens her mouth to say something, but Max is faster: “No, I know that’s not healthy either, but there’s some part of me that wants that. That safety.”

“What’s unsafe about what you have right now?” Rachel asks, not unkindly. She’s gone back to painting her nails, but she pauses to look at Max for the question. 

Max rolls her head to one side, then the other on her headrest. “I just - I don’t want you to do anything differently, but any time I’m alone, I’d rather not be.” She flexes her hands. “Keep tabs on everyone. Make sure we’re all safe.”

“Mm,” Rachel says.

“You’ve got to learn to trust us again,” Chloe supplies. “We’re not in danger anymore, you made sure of that. We can take care of ourselves now.”

“But what if _I_ can’t?” Max says. “I still wake up every night, and it takes me ages to calm down if you aren’t there.”

“What? I thought it got better?” Chloe blurts.

“Yeah, because I rewind every time after you’ve calmed me down,” Max says like, _duh._

Ah, fuck. How did Chloe never think of that as a possibility? 

“Okay,” Rachel cuts in. “New rule. You let us know when we help you and with what. I know it’s some bad stuff but I _want to know._ ”

She sounds like she’s thinking of the time Max told her about how they found her corpse. It’s a vivid image, hard to get rid of for Chloe as well. Sometimes she still dreams of it, digging into the soft earth of the junkyard and finding flesh. Rachel’s face, except empty, except full of bugs. She shudders. “I know you’re the one with the trauma and we can’t take that away from you, but we can at least share the knowledge, and the stories, and the awful details. So at least it won’t be news to us every time you bring it up.”

Max taps her feet against the seat, and fidgets, and cracks her fingers. “Okay,” she says finally. “Deal.”

Then: “I can’t rewind in the car anyway.”

“What?!” Chloe asks, “I was only letting Rachel lounge around in the backseat like that because I was sure you wouldn’t let anything happen to her! Rachel, sit up!”

“Yeah,” Max says, “I stay in the same place when I rewind, so I’d rewind myself right through the windshield.”

Rachel snickers at that, but obediently puts her feet down.

“So a rewind-free zone then,” she says, contemplative. “Seems like a good place to play truth or dare?”

Chloe groans. 

“Yes, good,” Max says, clapping her hands. “I start. Chloe, have you ever been jealous of an alternative self?”

Chloe lifts one hand from the steering wheel to drag it down her face. “You didn’t let me pick dare,” she complains.

“You can’t do dares, you’re driving,” Rachel says smugly from where she’s leaning far enough forward to peek between Max and Chloe so as not to miss a single word.

“Okay. Fine. Yes. Like, a thousand times. Blue hair and tattoos sounds honestly way cooler than I’ll ever be.”

“Even if you finish school and become a lawyer just like Ms Hayes?” Max sing-songs, and this time when Chloe drags her hand across her face she uses her nails.

“Like I’m the only one to ever get a tiny crush on an authority figure, _Lily_ ,” she replies, which shuts Max up fast.

“My turn. Rachel, what’s your worst fear?”

“I pick dare!”

“We’re in a car. There’s nothing to dare. We’re playing truth or truth.”

Rachel leans back, eyes narrowing like she intends to argue some more, but then Max turns around to take her hand, and she leaves it.

“I’m afraid I’ll die before I get the chance to leave an impact.”

“No need to be afraid,” Chloe says at the same time as Max says, “You already have,” and then hurries to clarify: “Left an impact, I mean,” because they live in a crazy world where Max has to specify that she didn’t mean _you already died before you got the chance to leave an impact._

Rachel pulls Max’s hand (and, by extension, Max) close and presses a kiss to her fingers. 

Max slumps against the headrest with a dreamy smile. It would be sickening if Chloe weren’t so fucking in love.

“My turn. Max - what about you? Ever been jealous of an alternative self?”

“Ah, fudge,” Max says. “Yeah. When I came back and realized that Chloe _missed_ the old me. I was so selfish, I never assumed you’d grow to like the self I’d ordered to stick around and do her absolute best to be a good friend to you, and when I realized my mistake… man, that hurt.”

“You’re your best self,” Chloe says immediately, and Rachel adds, “You know, I don’t want to play favorites - who am I kidding, that’s all I do, you’re my favorite Max.”

Max smiles, and gives Chloe’s thigh a few playful pats. “Aw, thanks. You guys are my favorites, too. Now, let’s see… Rachel, since you like to play favorites, who of us do you like best?”

“Oh wow,” Rachel says. “What the fuck.” Chloe meets her eyes in the rear view mirror, pointedly raising her eyebrows at her. Rachel sticks her tongue out at her. “It’s none of you, you both suck.” Chloe laughs, and Rachel continues, “I want to say it’s both of you, but you’re right, I always have a favorite. It’s whoever I’m hanging out with at the moment. If you’re both there, it’s whoever’s talking at the moment. Unless they’re trying to make me choose, _Max,_ in which case it’s Chloe.” 

“Fair,” Max says, and produces a giant bag of Doritos from the glove compartment. “How about now?”

“You’re my favorite, Max, always have been, give me those chips.”

Max hands them over, and Chloe makes a face until Rachel stuffs a Dorito into her mouth.

“Do you think this is the best thing that could have happened?” Rachel asks after a moment, and both Chloe and Max immediately reply: “Yes.”

“Even with Victoria?”

“Victoria has been a bitch in _all_ realities I’ve visited,” Max says, then stops herself.

“Yeah?” Rachel asks.

“Well, there was one where she wasn’t. But I’m not going back there.”

“Which one was it?”

“It was the one where I saved Chloe’s dad and Chloe died instead.” Chloe freezes for a second. It’s been awhile since she’s thought of that particular reality. That it was an option at all. 

“Do you miss your dad, Chloe?” Max asks, softly. 

Chloe doesn’t need to think about her answer this time. “Of course I do. Every fucking day. Whenever I see how tired Joyce is, whenever I struggle to fix the car. Every time I eat pizza, every time you take a picture with that old camera, Max - he’s missing in so many aspects of my life. But you _said_ you won’t bring him back, and I get why you have to be selfish about this. You had to make so many decisions you should never have had to make, and you still brought us here - and look at us now."

She lifts a hand from the wheel to gesture at them, the cassette player - _happiness hit her like a train on the track -_ the pale December sun slanting through the windshield, “We’re _here_ and we love each other _so much_ and we’ve gotten so much better at talking about things, and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Max covers Chloe’s hand where it’s back on the steering wheel, and Rachel hugs her from behind as best she can, with the seat between them. 

“Hear, hear,” Rachel says, and Chloe can hear the smile in her voice, “Chloe talking about her feelings without sounding tortured about it. They grow up so fast.” She wipes an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye.

Chloe finger guns her, which is a little awkward in the car with Rachel sitting behind her, but nobody can say that she left out a prime opportunity to bring out finger guns like this.

“My turn,” she says, “Rachel, you ever gonna tell your parents about us?”

Rachel uses her current position to slink behind Chloe’s seat and out of view. “Ugh,” she says.

“I will rub my grubby Dorito hands all over your face,” Max warns her. “And I can’t even rewind it.”

“Oh my God,” Rachel says, “Yes, I want to tell them. Apparently I’m very chicken about it, though. They are - I mean, you’ve met them. Very proper. And I mean, I’m like 90% sure they love me and will continue to do so. But.” She sighs. “I’m just so done being judged. I know it’s tricky, and I know it will continue to be tricky, but I’m happy with both of you, and I’m all in, and I don’t want anyone to question us because they _care._ ”

“I feel you,” Max says. “I mean, I don’t want to lie to my parents, but I also definitely don’t want them to feel like they can talk to me about this in any way.”

“I can only recommend the method of dropping an ever-increasing amount of hints and then immediately leaving, so they can draw their own conclusions and never bother you with it,” Chloe says. “Although Joyce _may_ still just be completely clueless and _very_ slow on the uptake.”

“Thanks, I will try that,” Rachel says, laughing. “Reasonably sure my parents are _not_ slow on the uptake. I mean, there’s a reason I grew up to be such a good liar. Okay, done. Max! What’s the ballsiest thing you’ve done that you rewound?”

Max contemplates this for a while, licking Dorito dust off her fingers. “Dumping Frank’s meal on the floor in the Two Whales?” She says finally. “There was a bit where I told Jefferson to eat shit and die, but I’m pretty sure that was a dream.”

“You did _what”,_ Chloe asks, and Rachel says, “Frank _Bowers?”_

Max laughs. “It was the only way to get his keys, but it was also kind of fun while it was happening.”

“Now I want to know what the ballsiest thing was that you’ve done that you _haven’t_ rewound.”

“You wait your turn, Chloe. If you were to get a tattoo, what would it be?”

“Oh man,” Chloe says. “I’ve always loved tattoo sleeves, but I feel like I should distinguish myself from my alternate self, so… I mean, I’ve thought about getting a hedgehog and a bunny in Kate’s and my style, but they say you should never get a tattoo for a person…”

“Let’s take a selfie right now, and I’ll use it to go back in time and tell you right now if you shouldn’t get it after all,” Max proposes, and Chloe laughs. “Sure, okay.”

Rachel leans forward again while Max gets out her camera, and they make a variety of dumb faces and gestures at it until Max is laughing so hard she can’t keep it steady anymore. She distributes the polaroids evenly among them. Chloe calls dibs on the one where they all make devil’s horns and exaggeratedly snarl at the camera.

“So,” she says, watching Max stuff the polaroid into the inside pocket of Chloe’s jacket as instructed. “What’s the verdict on the hedgehog tattoo?”

  
"That's a strong yes on the hedgehog front,” Rachel says. “Hedge yeah,” Max supplies, and ducks away when Rachel attempts to hit her for the awful pun.

“Very good. I also vote for a coffee, since we’re voting,” Chloe says. “And whoops, would you look at that, I get two votes in all things driving related, so here we go,” and she takes a right towards where a starbucks sign is visible from the highway. They’re almost there, but she’s feeling coffee, and it’s not like anyone can stop her.

“Not that I’m opposed to coffee, but two votes don’t give you an automatic majority in this situation,” Rachel says.

“Oh man, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Rachel… you get zero votes on all things math, so the majority is mine because _I_ say two votes are enough.”

“Fair enough,” Rachel says, not sounding like she had particularly high stakes in the coffee debate anyway. “Man, I’m feeling something so cinnamon-y that everyone within ten feet feels compelled to tell me that cinnamon is _bad for you_.”

“I’ll do you one better, I’m feeling something so cinnamon-y everyone within ten feet immediately dies from a cinnamon overdose,” Chloe replies, steering into the drive thru lane. “Including me. It’s bound to be my coolest death yet.”

“Not hard,” Max says offhandedly, “None of your deaths were particularly cool.”

“But there were many of them, and I think that makes me cooler than either of you,” Chloe says and then ends that conversation by pressing the speak button and giving their order.

*

The scenery flying past goes abruptly greener before their over-sweetened, over-priced beverages are empty, an evergreen forest on both sides of the road. The B-side of Max’s road trip playlist comes to an end ( _you took a polaroid of us / then discovered / the rest of the world was black and white / but we were in screaming color_ ), so Chloe turns on the sputtering radio. 

“Everyone ready for some caves?” she asks.

“I am ready to embrace my inner cavewoman,” Rachel says, and Max puts her feet up on the dashboard and flashes her a thumbs-up from behind her paper cup.

“I’ve never been to a cave,” Chloe admits. 

“Me neither,” Max says. 

“What! Two firsts? It’s gonna be so cool!” 

“Very cool. 50 degrees all year round, I’ve heard,” Max says, and ducks again. Chloe gives her shoulder a shove in Rachel’s stead.

When she comes to a halt in front of a house made of dark wood, they’ve all finished their drinks and stacked the cups. 

“This is it,” Chloe calls, and they get out.

Their tour guide is Marian, a resolute looking lady with greying hair, and they are the only ones who seem to want to go underground when it’s already near freezing where the sunlight reaches.

She leads them down a very narrow staircase, single file. “Don’t touch the walls,” she warns them. “The stone changes color when it’s touched, and we’re trying to preserve the original white as best we can.”

“Here, I’ll help you not touch anything,” Rachel whispers, holding out a hand behind her. It’s a joke, but it’s not like Chloe will pass up on a chance to hold her hand, so they end up descending the stairs hand in hand (in hand, because Max wordlessly snags Chloe’s other hand) from behind her. 

She looks up at the ceiling, glistening white in the low light. Every step she takes takes her further away from the outside world, where people care about who’s holding hands with whom. It feels a little bit like the earth is breathing them in, cold and damp.

They round a corner, and Marian opens her mouth to start explaining, stops, does a double take. “That’s not possible,” she says, and Rachel tugs Chloe forward to see what she’s talking about.

When they crowd into the cave, the light overhead is reflected thousandfold across the glittering walls. Max lets go of her hand to get out her camera, and before Chloe can stop herself, she runs a finger across one of the crystals that the walls around them seem to consist of: smooth and solid, almost like glass. Like they’re standing inside a giant geode. 

“I thought this was a marble cave?” Rachel asks, head tilted up towards the glittering ceiling. She’s smiling, like she already knows the answer before it comes: “It was,” Marian says, “I mean, it is. I don’t know what this is, some - prank --” and she tries to pry off one of the crystals, but it holds tight. 

Max wordlessly hands Chloe a polaroid: it’s her, running a hand across the walls, the refracted light painting tiny rainbows across her face. 

It’s beautiful in a way that Chloe has never seen herself, almost serene. 

Every time she sees a picture Max took, she is reminded that this is how Max sees that person, that place, that animal, the world. When Max thinks of Chloe, this is what she sees. Max thinks she’s beautiful all the time, and she was only waiting for the right lighting, the right moment to show her.

It’s enough to make her briefly press the picture to her chest and squeeze Max’s hand, hard, Marian be damned.

(Marian is not looking, she’s muttering, pacing the cave.)

“Hey, can we still - I can see some water in the next cave, are we still doing the tour?” Rachel asks, putting her hands together like she’s pleading.

Chloe almost laughs out loud. She knows Rachel’s innocent act, it never disappoints.

And sure enough, Marian replies, shaken: “Of

course, yeah, you paid for the tickets, I should see what the rest looks like, anyway… Sorry I can’t tell you anything about this…”

And she makes for the adjacent cave. Chloe gives Rachel a broad grin in passing, and Rachel winks at her.

If the strange occurrences in Max’s alternative reality were warnings, Chloe thinks as they enter a much larger cavern with a lake taking up the better part of it, this must be a sign they’re doing it right. It’s too beautiful to be anything else: the still surface of the lake glittering with the light from above, prisms splitting it into rainbows upon rainbows. Rachel turns to her, her face an array of colors and feelings, looking the way Chloe feels: like she’s so full of love she has to share some of it, to keep from spilling over. 

It all fits in with the theory Chloe has been adding onto since their talk with Kate: that whatever gave Max her powers has big and small ways to show its opinion about how she’s using them, with Max’s headaches and nosebleeds and - whatever this is. There’s not much science behind it, but Chloe finds herself leaning toward the feeling: They’re doing it right. They’re on a good path. They’re _meant_ to be together, and to be happy, and to be _here._

She remembers the junkyard, the tree-turned-cross, and the white lilies. She remembers how Max said that it looked like something was apologizing for not being able to fix this, too. At the time, Chloe thought it was just an awkward apology from Max, because _she_ is the one with the power, and she refused to use it - but it’s starting to make sense now: They must be dealing with something sentient, something that has opinions, something that, in whatever way, _likes_ them and wants to protect them.

For the first time in ages, Chloe lets herself think of a benevolent God.

She keeps the thought close to her chest, and follows a speechless Marian and Max into the next cavern. This one is longer, with glittering stalagmites and stalactites. Even Chloe knows that this is not a thing.

Max walks up to a loose crystal on the floor. She stands by it for a while, then picks it up, turning it over in her hands. It almost looks like it’s glowing in her hands.

Marian finally seems to come to. “What have you got there?” she asks, probably remembering her own “no touch” rule. 

Max looks her square in the face and pockets the crystal.

Marian sputters. “Wha--”

_”--ahW“ .srettups nairaM_

_.latsyrc eht stekcop dna ecaf eht ni erauqs reh skool xaM_

_.elur ”hcuot on“ eht gnirebmemer ylbaborp ,sksa ehs ”?ereht tog uoy evah tahW“ .ot emoc ot smees yllanif nairaM_

_.sdnah reh ni gniwolg s’ti ekil skool tsomla tI .sdnah reh ni revo ti gninrut ,pu ti skcip neht ,elihw a rof ti yb sdnats ehS_

Chloe blinks, and the crystal on the floor is gone. When she looks up, Max catches her eye and winks - or, well, tries to. It’s Max. It’s more of a slow blink, a cat’s smile.

Chloe shakes her head at her, grinning.

“I didn’t think crystal stalagmites were possible?” Rachel asks, politely interested, from the entrance. Chloe can see her amusement behind the question, clear as day. 

“They aren’t,” Marian says, sounding lost. “I don’t know what this is, what - _grew here_ overnight, but it sure wasn’t here yesterday. I should call the police…” She trails off, and Chloe knows she’s probably imagining how _that_ conversation will go.

“Do you know what kind of stone this is?”She asks.

“Could be quartz,” Marian says, absent. She pats the wall next to her. “I’d have to get an expert in here to be sure, and the lighting isn’t ideal to see the color, but I think they’re clear.”

“Definitely clear,” Max agrees, between two pictures. She hasn’t asked them to move out of frame once, which means either she’s being very patient, or she wants them in the pictures, contrasting the sharp angles of the stone. Or maybe she has and just rewound it, since she seems to get to keep whatever items she acquires.

Chloe waits for Rachel to catch up, slings an arm around her waist and surreptitiously stuffs her right hand into the back pocket of Rachel’s jeans. They spend the rest of the tour gently bumping into each other while they crane their heads to see it all. 

When Max realizes that Chloe is wearing fingerless gloves and possibly getting a little cold, she stows away her camera and shares her right coat pocket with her, which Chloe gratefully accepts.

By the time the tour is over, they’re so full of impressions that it makes them a little giggly. Max tips Marian well, possibly out of guilt for the stolen crystal, and they leave her to her confusion. Chloe makes a mental note to keep tabs on any news regarding Oregon Caves for a few days. 

The cave breathes them out with a gust of slightly stale, cold air, into the fresher, colder air outside. It feels like it should be night, but the sun is only just beginning to set. They stumble back to the truck, slightly starry eyed. 

Max hands her another tape, and with Rachel on the passenger seat, Chloe drives them to their hostel near Grant’s Pass to the sound of the _How to Train Your Dragon_ soundtrack. Max is going through the polaroids she took, putting some in her scrapbook and handing out the rest like candy. None of them say much: it feels like any attempt to put words to what they just saw would only diminish it, so they don’t.

They get a greasy dinner at a McDonald’s on the way, and when they arrive at the hostel, they’re just awake enough to brush their teeth, push their two queen beds together, and fall into a pile on top of it.

“What a good first day of a road trip,” Rachel mumbles. Max leans across Chloe to carefully set the stone she stole down on the nightstand, where it breaks the light of the bedside lamp. “Very successful,” Chloe agrees, shifting underneath the covers until she’s found a comfortable position. 

“Mmm,” Max says, eyes already closing.


	4. In Hindsight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go. The last chapter. Everyone who has commented or kudo-ed, thank you so much, every single one of the e-mails has made my day a little bit brighter. I love y'all. <3

The road trip continues without a hitch. They all call their respective anxious parents in the morning and get back on the road. Being able to push their beds together and sleep in does wonders for their mood, even though Max wakes them up again when she has night terrors, or rather: she doesn’t rewind them back into sleep when they have managed to calm her down.

Chloe feels many ways about this, but most of all she’s grateful. Max is an open book about so many things, but her particular brand of trauma leaves Chloe floundering more often than not; she is glad to have some amount of experience with what works for Max and what doesn’t, and she doesn’t mind learning about the alternate reality that managed to fuck Max up so thoroughly in only four days.

A gasp of “Kate!” is what wakes Chloe on the second day, in a cottage by the Fern Ridge lake. She turns around to Max, bleary-eyed.

Max is shaking, and Chloe carefully puts a hand on her back. “Kate is okay,” she whispers. “We made sure she would be. Remember?”

“And then we left her over Christmas,” Max replies, just as quiet.

“She will be okay. Remember how she stood up to Victoria the other day? Girl has balls of steel.”

“It only took one video,” Max says, and Chloe falters. Max doesn’t talk much about the other timeline’s Kate, and Chloe doesn’t usually pry.

“What video?”

“Victoria took a video of her making out with - I don’t know, some guys after she was drugged, it went viral, people were - you know, what happened to us, people were making fun, staring. Graffiti in the bathrooms.” Max takes a deep breath. “Jefferson told her she was complaining too much when she tried to talk to him about it. The next day, she was on the roof of the school.”

“How did you stop her?”

“I stopped time.”

“You what now?”

“I don’t know - I never could, before or after, but just this one time it let me stop time. I went up on the roof with her, and I talked her down, and Chloe, she would have jumped, I know she would have, I _saw-”_

“Shhh, hey,” Chloe says. _It let me_ , she thinks. It’s not the first time Max has talked about the universe like it has some amount of agency, but it’s never been with a kind voice. _It wanted you dead so bad,_ she said once. “You saved her, yeah? Then and now. She just needed to know someone was on her side. And this timeline doesn’t have Jefferson, or a video. She distanced herself from her mother out of her own free will, and I think that’s a good thing. Hey, let’s call her tomorrow and see how she’s doing, yeah?”

Max nods. When Chloe looks over to the alarm clock on the bedside table that blinks an unforgiving 4:23 am at her. At least Rachel hasn’t woken up yet. Max’s breaths are still uneven, chest heaving.

“Here. Breathe with me.” Chloe breathes in deeply, and Max immediately relaxes a fraction as she copies her. “In, hold, and out.”

They breathe together a couple of times, and finally Max’s head sinks back down to the pillow. “Thanks,” she says.

“It’s in the job description,” Chloe replies easily. “Hey, Max?” It’s probably a bad idea. But she can’t get the thought out of her head.

“Yeah?”

“When you were talking about stopping time, you said - it let you?”

“It - yeah. It’s like, different things are possible under different circumstances? I could rewind a stray bullet hitting you no problem, but rewinding when Rachel kissed me the first time cost me a lot of energy. Like running underwater.” Chloe gets stuck for the moment on the fake memory of being struck by a bullet, and then imagines Rachel kissing Max before they even talked about the possibility, but decides to move past both of those feelings.

“Mmm. Like an opinion?”

“Like… yeah. Like that. Like if I really wanted something, that made it harder to rewind that. But other times - I mean, I would constantly get headaches in the other timeline, and here almost never. But I really, really wanted to rewind a lot of things back then.” Max sounds like she’s already slowly falling asleep again. “It doesn’t really... make sense.”

 _Unless,_ Chloe thinks. “Mm,” she says, and then her pillows are too warm and her head is too heavy to think more, and she sinks back to sleep, too.

*

The next and last day of the road trip is almost a full day of driving, with a short lunch break scheduled in Portland. It’s also the 23rd of December, so they wisely scheduled a lot of time for traffic.

They did not schedule Max’s night terrors, but Chloe is willing to let her sleep in anyway; mostly because she’s hugging her pillow and occasionally making little sounds, and Chloe may be hard-hearted but it’s not like she’s _immune_ to Max being this adorable. Chloe can drive in the dark, it’s okay.

Rachel and her spend the morning exaggeratedly tiptoeing around the room, planning the route (traffic is already hell), and getting ready to go out.

Chloe stares into the cloudy hostel room mirror, toothbrush in mouth, and considers, for the first time in years, putting on makeup. It’s weird, giving a shit. She didn’t feel this way about meeting Rachel’s parents for the first time after they got together. Next to her, Rachel is putting on what Chloe likes to call her _warpaint_ , the kind of makeup she reserves for special occasions, though Rachel’s idea of a special occasion may differ from the norm.

“It’s going to be okay,” Rachel says, because Rachel can read minds.

“Mhm,” Chloe says noncommittally, and steals her mascara.

When Max finally stirs, they’ve assembled a tiny breakfast on the nightstand for her and are sharing the only chair, next to their packed suitcases.

Max raises her head, spends a few seconds looking around disorientedly and finally finds them. “Oh fudge,” she says. “I wanted to call Kate.”

“Let’s call Kate in the car, we gotta check out in half an hour,” Chloe says, and Max sits up, finds her breakfast, lights up, and digs in without hesitation.

“Thanks for letting me sleep in,” she says through a mouthful of donut.

“Course,” Chloe says. “Showering is out now, though.”

“S’okay”, Max replies. “My parents will still love me if I arrive stinky.” She gives Chloe a longer look. “Are you wearing mascara?”

“Yeah. Felt like it,” Chloe says, feeling strangely exposed. “Come on, less talking, more eating.”

Max stuffs the entire rest of the donut into her mouth, staring her down all the while.

They manage to check out in time and get the truck on the road. Max gets on the backseat without complaining, and proceeds to call Kate immediately.

“Hey, Kate? How are you doing?” She laughs. “Yeah, I slept in, Rachel and Chloe packed everything up so I could get an extra half hour. You’re probably already halfway through your day, right?”

“Put her on speaker!” Chloe calls back to her, and soon enough, Kate’s tinny voice sounds through the truck. “Good morning, guys!”

“Morning, Kate,” Chloe says, smiling. There’s something about Kate’s voice that just inspires happiness.

“What are you up to?” Rachel asks.

“Oh, not that much, shopping, drawing, taking walks… Warren invited me to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special with him - not like that!” she says, when Chloe whoops at her. “Just as a friend.”

“Does Warren know that?” Max asks, with the long-suffering air of someone who has been in this exact situation.

“Yeah, he’s actually, um, confessed to me about someone he likes, so I’m relatively sure,” Kate says, sounding like she’s barely containing laughter. “But what about you guys? How’s the road trip going?”

“Swimmingly,” Chloe says, right as she turns onto the highway and spots a traffic jam ahead. “Ugh.”

“Ugh?”

“I will never again get into a car on a 23rd of December,” Chloe says. “But other than that, it’s pretty dope.”

“We did a tour of a cave system, and went horse riding, and slept in a cottage by a lake,” Rachel interjects. “I feel like _dope_ doesn’t cover it.”

“Rachel has some feelings about her trip planning skills,” Chloe explains, and Kate laughs.

“But you’re doing okay?” Max asks.

“Yes,” Kate says. After a brief pause, she adds, “you know? I’m a little lonely sometimes, but at the same time, it’s so much better than constantly worrying if I’m good enough. My dad has called a couple of times. He’s been great about it.”

“That’s so good to hear,” Max says, relief audible in her voice.

“Thanks for checking up on --”

“What the _fuck,_ watch where you’re driving, you sentient piece of shit! Sorry, someone cut in front of me, I have to insult their entire family including any and all pets now, I don’t make the rules,” Chloe says, and continues to do just this.

“Okay, calm it with the road rage, Chloe,” Rachel says after Chloe has reached the second degree of kinship.

“They deser --” Rachel stuffs a marshmallow into her mouth before Chloe can finish her sentence, which effectively muffles her protest.

“What’s going on?” Kate asks. “I feel like this is my cue to hang up?”

“I’m muzzling Chloe so she doesn’t insult someone to death,” Rachel says.

“Definitely my cue to hang up,” Kate says. “Thank you for calling, it was good to hear from you! Don’t insult anyone to death, Chloe!”

“S not possible,” Chloe slurs through a mouthful of fluff. “I’ve tried. Okay, have a good one!”

There’s a chorus of _ciao_ s from Max and Rachel, and Max hangs up.

“You came pretty close that time you asked Jefferson how he liked your softer nature so far,” Rachel replies fondly. “To insulting him to death, I mean.”

Chloe chews and swallows. “Mm, that would’ve saved us a lot of work.”

Chloe watches Max shift on the back seat through the rearview mirror, and wonders if she feels left out when they talk about stuff that happened in their timeline. Probably not more than she would have anyway, since it happened before she moved back to Arcadia Bay.

“You know what,” Max says after a few seconds of thoughtful silence. “I’m glad I did everything I did in that alternate timeline.”

“Me too,” Chloe says, vaguely surprised. She had somehow assumed they were past this.

“No, I mean, I’m not just glad I ended up here, and now we’re all alive and together and in love,” and it’s still a thrill to hear her say it like that, “I mean I’m glad for everything that happened. So much of it was so awful, and there was so much pain, and I felt responsible for all of it, but it meant you got to keep your best friend and also become a raging feminist and also impress Rachel with your razor tongue, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m _glad_ I had to make an impossible decision so I came here looking for a third option. I’d do it again if I had to, to get here.”

And there’s something about that - and last night’s _it let me stop time_ \- Chloe feels something slot into place in her mind. “ _Lily_ ,” she says. “What if it’s _you?”_

Max blinks. “What?”

“The - the - the entity.” Chloe changes lanes, merging between two cars, and briefly loses her train of thought. “I mean… whatever determines whether or not you get a nosebleed or not when you try to rewind. Whatever let you stop time that one time. What if it’s you, but in _hindsight.”_

“What?” Max says again, but she sounds almost a little overwhelmed, this time. Rachel is sitting very still, eyes wide.

“It all makes sense! Look, it must be so awful to look at you go through everything you went through in hindsight? See all the things you rewound, all of them meaningless because you know in the end you would come back here, but it had to happen this exact way, you had to know everything? So all the headaches you got, what if they’re your future self looking back on your decision and having an opinion? Like, no, come _on_ , there’s a better solution to this, or, please for the love of _God_ stop rewinding when people you love kiss you?”

“I felt that,” Rachel says. “Ah, fuck, that’s a really good theory.”

“Going back in time to - what - make my past life harder, so everything happens like it did?” Max doesn’t sound happy, and Chloe realizes belatedly that this is also Max’s _future_ they might be talking about.

Rachel doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “No, look, it makes so much sense! From the perspective of someone who can just randomly give somebody the power to rewind time, Chloe would be the obvious solution to save me. But if it was you all along? If you were the only one who _could_ have the power because you _already had it?”_

“And the - the stars and the eclipse and the storm…” Max trails off.

Chloe brakes a little too harshly when she reaches the beginning of the traffic jam.

Rachel, already bent forward from the unexpected deceleration, takes the opportunity to get out her bag from under her seat. “Okay. I’ve got a theory, too,” she says. “Remember how we got each other caught up on everything in the junkyard? How Max took over for everything that happened in October?”

“Yeah?”

“Want me to read the rest of the dream journals to you guys?” She’s already got the notebook out and is leafing through the pages, dense with her round, loopy handwriting.

“Duh,” Chloe says when Max stays silent, and Rachel finds the right page and begins.

_“October 7th_

_Things have gotten progressively worse over the course of the last few weeks, so you don’t expect roses when you go in this time. (It’s a selfie even, to check up on this Chloe. You worry, and even though there is nothing you can do, you still feel an obligation.) What you don’t expect is to come face to face with Nathan Prescott, of all people, frantic and pacing._

_There’s an immediate pull away from him: you know what he’s capable of by now, and however pretty his words, and however beautiful his art, what you remember is the look in his eyes when he was escorted off the school grounds the day after they finally managed to lock Jefferson up: so full of hate, and specifically for you._

_When you put distance between your floating sense of self and him, you also widen your perspective to include Chloe. She’s standing with her arms crossed, faux-confident: you know her tells, even when she has blue hair and more issues than you can count._

_When she speaks, it’s just a shade too loud for comfort, even if the parking lot around them seems empty: “You want everyone to know you got me fucked up on God knows what to take pictures of me?”_

_And_

_No._

_There’s nowhere for the anger to go, when it slams into you: You can’t scream or punch Nathan or even ball your fists or cry or_

_You don’t have a voice, and you thought you’d gotten used to it by now, but there’s nothing to - do - you whirl upwards and higher, as Nathan hisses something, spins on his heel and makes for the school building, and there’s got to be someone who can help, there’s got to be someone who can beat Nathan up for you -_

_Flashes of classrooms pass through you too fast to register, until you falter and stop in one when you hear a familiar voice -_

_“One could argue that photography is going out of fashion, and it’s only a question of time until it’s replaced by film. To which I would reply - Yes, Victoria?”_

_Jefferson is still here._

_Jefferson is still free and there’s nobody around to stop him, you look around frantically and - that’s Max, hunched over her notes - Max could help - she loves Chloe, she probably loves Chloe here, too -_

_You still don’t have a voice, but you’re willing to try anything to get her to help, and you’re already a spinning mess of a perspective, too much anger and fear and no outlet, so you just sink down towards Max’s head, as much of a screaming mess as you can be, hoping that any part of Max will pick up on it -_

_But then it’s just the camera on her desk that picks up on you and tips your perspective like a shift of gravity, and you spin into it and_ out in your bedroom, eye to eye with yourself in the mirror of your wardrobe.”

“That was the moment I had that first vision,” Max says slowly. “The one with the -”

“That’s what I thought,” Rachel says, sounding almost _satisfied_ , of all things. “That’s what it felt like. A storm.”

Chloe stares out at the street. She remembers all too well how she called Rachel a forest fire in that letter to Max, and how Max would fondly call her a force of nature later.

For a moment, she feels small. Insignificant. Here she is, between two people who can and have moved worlds to be together, and what does she do? She knows how to start a fight and -

“It’s possible,” Max says, sounding about as small as Chloe feels. Chloe shakes off the feeling and finishes her thought: And she knows how to make a friend, and really, isn’t that just as important? Isn’t that what brought them here in the first place? Befriending Max, befriending Rachel, and then, when Max wouldn’t, befriending Kate?

Max pulls her feet up on the seat and hugs her knees. “That’s a lot,” she says. She’s very white. “I’m just some teen. I rewound to cheat on fucking _tests,_ or to have a clever comeback for Victoria. I don’t want some - earth-shattering - power…”

“Then you don’t have to use it for anything earth-shattering,” Rachel says kindly. “So what if you keep using it for our shenanigans, for breaking into the pool at night and sneaking into each other’s rooms and for passing Chemistry. You already worked your miracle. You can settle down now.”

“And now you know the only one who’s watching is you,” Chloe adds. “Not some possibly dangerous entity that could end you at a whim.”

Max, who has begun to breathe rather rapidly, calms down a little. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay. Settling down. No more miracles for the foreseeable future.”

“That said, if you’ve got _anything at all_ to make your parents like me,” Chloe throws in, and Max laughs.

“They already do,” she promises. She scrunches up her nose in the way that means she’s accessing her new memories. “They were so happy I got back in contact with you after we moved away. I didn’t make a lot of friends in Seattle.” She leans forward to pat Rachel’s head, “they’re also thrilled to meet you.”

“They should be, I’m a delight,” Rachel replies.

She doesn’t show any signs of nervousness, but then again, she knows how to deal with stage fright.

“Of course none of this makes any sense, on a scientific level,” Chloe says after a while.

“Yeah,” Rachel agrees. “You know, I’ve been thinking for a while that in the end, it’ll always come down to ‘life is strange’, when we’re looking for an explanation. Why did it happen? Why Max? How does it work? Where does the energy for the natural disasters and miracles come from? Who the fuck knows? Life’s fucking strange, man. Good things and bad things and just plain weird things just happen sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Max says again, a little relieved.

*

“Five miles to Portland,” Chloe announces when she spots a sign. “If I said let’s just find the first Chipotle, would there be mutiny, or…”

“I haven’t had Chipotle in _forever_ ,” Max cuts in, though who knows what _forever_ means in her rewind-pampered mind.

“Do I get two votes in all things food, granting me an automatic majority in this math-free scenario?” Rachel asks, already sounding somewhat defeated.

“You can try your little one-man-mutiny, but I fear it won’t succeed,” Chloe replies, grinning.

“Then I will succumb to the soggy tacos of your choice.” Rachel sags against the side window in what’s a pretty good impression of one.

“You are the soggy taco of my choice,” Chloe says, setting a blinker, “Oh, look, a Chipotle sign, it’s our lucky day.”

“Why do they need to be _everywhere_ ,” Rachel whines.

 _“Capitalism,”_ Chloe replies cheerfully.

*

They seat themselves around a cheap plastic table and dig in with varying degrees of abandon. Chloe watches Max eat her taco with so much gusto it’s almost obscene, and she feels her anxiety about re-meeting Max’s parents ebb. It’ll be fine, and if it isn’t - they live in Seattle. Chloe can avoid them if she wants to.

“You’ve got a -” Rachel leans forward and kisses sauce off Max’s nose without finishing her sentence. Max briefly goes cross-eyed, then slurs a “Thanks,” and takes another bite.

Rachel shares a fond look with Chloe, and Chloe nudges her foot with hers. Rachel takes a sip of her soda, and when she reappears, she looks almost bashful.

Chloe keeps forgetting that Rachel is in just as deep as they are, because Rachel never seems fazed by anything. But she has been dating Rachel for almost a year now - if she watches for them, she knows her signs. Chloe blows her a kiss, which Rachel casually catches with her straw, but Chloe sees the little smile shaping around it while she lowers it back into her soda to slurp up what’s left of it.

“Where’s _my_ kiss?” Max asks, all wide-eyed innocence and avocado on her chin.

Chloe and Rachel both blow her a kiss at the same time, and Max drops the rest of her taco without hesitance to catch them, one in each hand.

“Always good to know our kisses rank higher than your taco,” Chloe says.

“Barely,” Max replies, wiping her chin. She glances briefly at the hopeless mess of chicken and vegetables on her tray as if considering if it’s worth picking back up. “Ah, that was good. Okay gang,” which is something she’s been saying a lot. It’s adorable only by sheer force of personality. “Who’s ready for my parents? Because I definitely am. I’ve been needing a motherly hug since October.”

“Yeah, let’s get you that mom-hug, stat,” Chloe says.

“Hey, Max?” Rachel asks, getting up to throw out their trash and return their trays. “What are your parents like?”

“Oh!” Max frowns. “I really haven’t been talking about them much, have I?”

“I mean, so far I know you like them, which is a good starting point, and they’re cool with us staying over Christmas, so very promising, but what’s the dynamic like?”

Chloe knows what this is about. Rachel will sometimes do this when she cares about impressing people. She likes to get a lay of the land so she can buff her charisma properly, get her lines ready. She smiles.

“As far as I remember, Vanessa is resolute, but in a very cute way. She knows how to run a household, and she can get a little bossy. Just do what she says and you’re golden. Ryan is a kind dude. Doesn’t say much, but when he does, he’s hilarious.”

Chloe turns toward Max. “Still accurate?”

Max gives a little half-nod. “Yeah, except you know, we’re all five years older. Mom gets a little annoying sometimes with the rigidity of her rules, and Dad’s jokes aren’t always funny anymore.”

“Oh,” Chloe says. “Well, they’ll always be funny in my book.”

“Yeah, you also honked at the dude with the ‘honk if you <3 titties’ sign,” Max says, long-suffering.

“I don’t see your point. That was an excellent sticker. Titties are very important.”

“Word,” Rachel says.

Chloe gets back into the truck, starts the B-side of Max’s second tape, and gets them back on the road.

“Can we…” Max starts from the passenger seat. Chloe raises her eyebrows at her.

“I was just wondering if we could get this to a pawn-shop or something? I kind of want to know what it is now.” She’s holding up the crystal she picked up in the cave, twirling it between her fingers. It’s almost fist-sized, and beautiful in the light of the low sun.

“Oh! I meant to check out what happened to the caves anyway, wanna google that for me?” Chloe says to no one in particular. Rachel, who never minds spontaneously educating herself and others, already has her phone out. “And I guess look for a pawn-shop in Portland, as well,” she adds.

“There’s nothing in here about - oh, but the caves are closed for tours until next year! It doesn’t say why,” Rachel says. “Pawn shop, wait a minute… Okay, it’s another two miles, then take a right.”

“I wonder why they closed the caves,” Chloe muses. “Crystal caves must be way cooler attractions than calcit ones, I can’t imagine why they’d be passing up the opportunity? Unless they’re taking the time to take proper pictures to advertise.”

“That’s your right coming up,” Rachel says, and Chloe dutifully sets her blinker.

“I could always send them some of the ones I took,” Max says, thoughtful. “It’d be cool to be credited?”

“Let’s wait until we know what it is,” Chloe replies.

*

The pawn shop Rachel directs them to has a partially working neon sign that reads ‘pa n shop’, and one of those flickering psychedelic ‘open’ signs in the door. Chloe likes it immediately.

A bell dings when Rachel opens the door, and an elderly woman looks up from the crossword puzzle of the daily newspaper. “Afternoon,” she says briskly. “What can I do for you?”

“Hi.” Max walks up to her and places the crystal on the counter. “I inherited this uncut diamond from my aunt, and I don’t really have a use for it - could you tell me what it’s worth?”

Chloe barely suppresses a reaction. Looking over to Rachel, she’s also sporting her poker face, which means she must be surprised, too.

It makes sense, of course: If it’s anything less than a diamond, Max can rewind, correct herself, use the proper terminology, and maybe drive up the price they’d get if they walked in admitting they don’t even know what they have.

“A diamond, huh,” the pawnbroker says, sceptical. “Let’s see.” She takes the gem, inspects it from all sides, and places it under a microscope. Her chair creaks when she bends down to look through the binoculars, and Chloe looks over to Max, who is taking in the shop’s interior and visibly trying not to fidget.

Rachel is standing by the counter, keeping an eye on the pawnbroker, who is muttering and adjusting the focus of the microscope.

She fusses a little, then moves over to a magnifying glass, as if she doesn’t trust the microscope.

Chloe raises her eyebrows. If she’s not mocking them yet, things are looking good.

“Alright,” she says. “How much do you want for that?”

“A thousand dollars,” Max says.

“Done,” the woman says, and Chloe thinks, _that was too cheap -_

_\- paehc oot saw taht ,skniht eolhC dna ,syas namow eht ”,enoD“_

_.syas xaM ”,srallod dnasuoht A“_

“Two thousand dollars,” Max says, without missing a beat. Chloe manages not to make a sound.

The woman narrows her eyes at Max for a moment. “One five,” she says.

“Two thousand,” Max says, “or I’m going to the next pawn shop.”

“Fine,” she says. “How did you say you came into this again?”

“Inherited it from my aunt.” Max is not as good of a liar as Rachel, but she’s gotten a lot better since she came back, and it doesn’t look like the woman is all that interested in the truth.

“I’m going to need some ID,” she says.

Max pulls out her wallet wordlessly. When Chloe looks closely, she can see her hands shake the slightest bit, but in general, she looks in her element. Of course, Chloe thinks: She can just rewind, here. This is an easy situation for her to get right.

As the woman copies down Max’s data, Chloe goes to admire a pair of turquoise earrings on one of the glass shelves that line the walls. When she reaches out a hand to touch them, the pawnbroker scoffs at her without even looking up. Chloe takes them in hand while looking straight at her still-bent head.

“Miss, put that back.”

Chloe summons all of her willpower and sets the earrings back down instead of putting them on and pointedly admiring herself in a mirror.

“Thanks.” She opens a squeaking register and starts counting 100-dollar-bills into Max’s hand. “Well!” She says, when Max is holding a thick wad of cash, suddenly cheerful. “You guys have yourselves a great day!” She hands Max a receipt, which Max immediately folds up neatly into halves, fourths, eighths. She briefly attempts sixteenths, then catches the elderly woman’s look and quickly stuffs the receipt into her pocket. “Thank you, you too,” she says, and they leave the shop.

The bell dings again as the door slams shut behind them, and Rachel turns around to them, half-laughing. “Well wasn’t that a-”

_”-a taht t’nsaw lleW“ .gnihgual-flah ,meht ot dnuora snrut lehcaR dna ,meht dniheb tuhs smals rood eht sa sgnid lleb ehT_

_.pohs eht evael yeht dna ,syas ehs ”,oot uoy ,uoy knahT“ .tekcop reh otni tpiecer eht sffuts ylkciuq dna kool s’namow ylredle eht sehctac neht ,shtneetxis stpmetta ylfeirb ehS .shtgie ,shtruof ,sevlah otni yltaen pu sdlof yletaidemmi xaM hcihw ,tpiecer a xaM sdnah ehS ”!yad taerg a sevlesruoy evah syug uoY“ .lufreehc ylneddus ,hsac fo daw kciht a gnidloh si xaM nehw ,syas ehS ”!lleW“ .dnah s’xaM otni sllib-rallod-001 gnitnuoc strats dna retsiger gnikaeuqs a snepo ehS ”.sknahT“_

_.rorrim a ni flesreh gnirimda yldetniop dna no meht gnittup fo daetsni kcab sgnirrae eht stup dna rewoplliw reh fo lla snommus eolhC_

_”.kcab taht tup ,ssiM“_

_.daeh tneb-llits reh ta thgiarts gnikool elihw dnah ni meht sekat eolhC .pu gnikool neve tuohtiw reh ta sffocs rekorbnwap ,meht hcuot ot dnah a tuo sehcaer ehs nehW .sllaw eht enil taht sevlehs ssalg eht fo eno no sgnirrae esiouqrut fo riap a erimda ot seog eolhC ,atad s’xaM nwod seipoc namow eht sA_

_.thgir teg ot reh rof noitautis ysae na si sihT .ereh ,dniwer tsuj nac ehS :skniht eolhC ,esruoc fO .tnemele reh ni skool ehs ,lareneg ni tub ,tib tsethgils eht ekahs sdnah reh ees nac ehs ,ylesolc skool eolhC nehW .ylsseldrow tellaw reh tuo sllup xaM_

_.syas ehs ”,DI emos deen ot gniog m’I“_

_.hturt eht ni detseretni taht lla si namow eht ekil kool t’nseod ti dna ,kcab emac ehs ecnis retteb tol a nettog s’ehs tub ,lehcaR sa rail a fo doog sa ton si xaM ”.tnua ym morf ti detirehnI“_

_”?niaga siht otni emac uoy yas uoy did woH“ .syas ehs ”,eniF“_

_”.pohs nwap txen eht ot gniog m’I ro“ ,syas xaM ”,dnasuoht owT“_

_.syas ehs ”,evif enO“ .tnemom a rof xaM ta seye reh sworran namow ehT_

_.dnuos a ekam ot ton seganam eolhC .taeb a gnissim tuohtiw ,syas xaM ”,srallod dnasuoht owT“_

_“A thousand dollars,” Max says._

_“Done,” the woman says, and Chloe thinks, that was too cheap -_

_\- paehc oot saw taht ,skniht eolhC dna ,syas namow eht ”,enoD“_

_.syas xaM ”,srallod dnasuoht A“_

_”?taht rof tnaw uoy od hcum woH“ .syas ehs ”,thgirlA“_

_.doog gnikool era sgniht ,tey meht gnikcom ton s’ehs fI .sworbeye reh sesiar eolhC_

_.epocsorcim eht tsurt t’nseod ehs fi sa ,ssalg gniyfingam a ot revo sevom neht ,elttil a sessuf ehS_

_.epocsorcim eht fo sucof eht gnitsujda dna gnirettum si ohw ,rekorbnwap eht no eye na gnipeek ,retnuoc eht yb gnidnats si lehcaR_

_.tegdif ot ton gniyrt ylbisiv dna roiretni s’pohs eht ni gnikat si ohw ,xaM ot revo skool eolhC dna ,sraluconib eht hguorht kool ot nwod sdneb ehs nehw skaerc riahc reH .epocsorcim a rednu ti secalp dna ,sedis lla morf ti stcepsni ,meg eht sekat ehS ”.ees s’teL“ .lacitpecs ,syas rekorbnwap eht ”,huh ,dnomaid A“_

_.evah yeht tahw wonk neve t’nod yeht gnittimda ni deklaw yeht fi teg d’yeht ecirp eht pu evird ebyam dna ,ygolonimret reporp eht esu ,flesreh tcerroc ,dniwer nac xaM ,dnomaid a naht ssel gnihtyna s’ti fI :esruoc fo ,esnes sekam tI_

_.oot ,desirprus eb tsum ehs snaem hcihw ,ecaf rekop reh gnitrops osla s’ehs ,lehcaR ot revo gnikooL .noitcaer a sesserppus ylerab eolhC_

_”?htrow s’ti tahw em llet uoy dluoc - ti rof esu a evah yllaer t’nod I dna ,tnua ym morf dnomaid tucnu siht detirehni I“ .retnuoc eht no latsyrc eht secalp dna reh ot pu sklaw xaM ”.iH“_

_”?uoy rof od I nac tahW“ .ylksirb syas ehs ”,noonretfA“ .repapswen yliad eht fo elzzup drowssorc eht morf pu skool namow ylredle na dna ,rood eht snepo lehcaR nehw sgnid lleb A_

“No need,” Max says when Rachel makes to open the door.

Rachel stares at her.

“Don’t tell me you changed your mind,” Chloe says. “What the fuck, I drove us all this way?”

Max gets out her wallet and shows them a thick wad of cash. Chloe looks once - twice - no, that’s definitely 100-dollar-bills, and a lot of them - “What the fuck, did you just rob the - did we just _help you rob a store?_ Did you just _delete my memory of a heist?”_

Max rolls her eyes at her. “Short story is, it was a diamond, she still has it, so it’s not stealing. I just didn’t feel great about her having my data, who knows what’s gonna come of this.”

Chloe follows her back to the truck, still hung up on the amount of money Max just casually showed her. Enough for a nice vacation. Enough to cover moving expenses, if they were to move in together. Enough to let her breathe easy for a second.

When she gets in, Max hands her a fistful of loose bills. “Uh -”, she starts, “What?” For a second, Chloe wonders if Max can suddenly read minds - if she said something and Max rewound - “Gas money,” Max says, smiling.

Chloe stares some more for good measure, then she musters a, “Dude, that’s gotta be like… a thousand bucks…”

“It’s two thousand, and you deserve them. I just picked up a rock. Use it as a fund for moving in together, if you want.”

“I’m not sure if I’m the right person to safekeep money,” Chloe starts, and Max starts stuffing the bills into the various pockets on Chloe’s person until Chloe surrenders, laughing. “Okay, okay, I got it! I got it. I’ll take it.”

She cranes her neck to get a look at Rachel over Max’s shoulder.

Rachel is smiling at her, expression so impossibly fond again that it’s almost too much to bear. “I’ve been daydreaming about moving in together,” she confesses.

“I will buy us _the biggest king size bed_ ,” Chloe promises, with as much affection as she can cram into the statement.

Max seems to get it, because she climbs over the handbrake and into her lap again to kiss her until Rachel makes a dejected sound and earns herself a couple of messy neck-craned backseat kisses.

“Okay,” Rachel finally says, laughing. “You guys are gonna get cricks in your necks, let’s get going. Don’t you hate driving in the dark, Chloe?”

Chloe sighs deeply and starts the truck. “I do,” she says. “When are we there?”

“You stole my line,” Max says, pulling up the GPS, “But I think we’ve got about two hours to go?”

Chloe eyes the sun, about to set. “It’s on,” she tells it, and backs out of the parking space.

*

In the end, she doesn’t win the race - though not for lack of trying. It’s just that there’s so damn much traffic that she has to watch through gritted teeth as sunset turns dusk, which slowly gives way to the night sky while she edges the truck forward.

It’s not as bad as she remembers, maybe because of the company - though Max has nodded off, her head lolling against the side window, and Rachel in the backseat is engrossed in her phone, probably texting.

But the current tape (Max seems to have an endless supply) is just the right amount of upbeat to not be unnerving - _give me a stage and I’ll be a rock’n’roll queen -_ and the moon and stars are so bright it almost seems like they’re trying to make a good impression.

One of the stars has caught her eye in particular, much brighter than the others and near the moon. She wonders how she never noticed it before.

She spends half an hour cursing and singing and admiring it intermittently, moving towards Seattle at a frankly annoying speed. When they’re stuck in almost immobile traffic again, she finally decides to ask.

“Hey, Rach. Tell me about that star by the moon over there.”

Rachel sets down her phone, looking out the window.

“That’s not a star,” is her immediate response, followed by, “what the fuck.” She leans to the left to get a better look at it through the windshield. “What the _fuck.”_

“Is it a bad thing?” Chloe asks, looking at the still-snoozing Max sidelong. “Do we need to get out of here?”

“No, it’s - looks like a supernova, but I don’t recall any supernovas being expected… The only star bright enough that’s going - I mean, technically hypernova - in the near future is supposed to be in the southern sky, Eta Carinae…”

“We just sold a fucking diamond that appeared overnight out of thin air,” Chloe says, “and you’re wondering about _stars_ not being where they’re supposed to?”

“ _Of course_ I am, stars are gigantic masses of gas, they don’t just _appear out of nowhere,”_ Rachel says, head still wedged between the front seats.

“Max said there were two moons in the alternate universe,” Chloe says. “Are you worried it’s a sign the universe is in disorder again?”

“I’m not worried,” Rachel says, and while it sounds sincere, she’s also an excellent liar. But then she catches and holds Chloe’s gaze in the rearview mirror and repeats, “I’m not worried. I mean it. Everything that has happened so far has been good, and I’m going to work to keep it that way, but it doesn’t feel like a bad omen. It feels like an extra light in a winter night. It feels like someone means well.”

“Someone?”

Rachel cocks her head to the side. “Think, Chloe. If I was the one who caused the tornado in the alternate universe…”

“You think this is …?”

“The other Rachel, somehow? I mean, it would make sense. In a weird way.”

Chloe thinks back to the tree-cross in the junkyard, and suddenly has to blink a lot. She reflexively turns on the windshield wipers, then laughs and turns them off again.

“Need someone to wipe the raindrops out of your eyes?” Rachel says fondly.

“Yeah,” Chloe says, sounding a little choked still. “I just - the junkyard, you know how Max said it looks like someone is apologizing for not being able to fix this?”

Rachel leans forward, cupping Chloe’s cheeks in her hands on both sides of her headrest, warm and grounding. “I remember. I love you in all timelines, I’m very sure of this. Across them, too. And I’m sorry as well.”

Chloe swallows once, twice, three times. When her tears spill over, it feels almost freeing. She hasn’t cried in years. Right now, she doesn’t know why.

Rachel catches her tears with the pads of her thumbs. “Oh, _love_ ,” she says, hugging the back of her seat closer.

“I’m okay,” Chloe says, sniffing. She’s glad the cars in front aren’t moving.

Max starts shifting and making those small, soft sounds again that mean she’s about to wake up. (It’s so adorable it almost physically hurts, every time.) When Rachel starts lifting her hands, Chloe lets go of the steering wheel to cover them with hers for a second. Rachel catches the drift and snuggles closer again, giving Chloe’s cheeks a few gentle pats.

“What’s happening?” Max murmurs blearily, looking at them through half-closed eyes. “You okay, Chloe?”

“Yeah,” Chloe says, “look, it’s a supernova, just for us.”

“Hypernova,” Rachel corrects absently.

Max looks out of the windshield. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” she says, then turns towards Chloe again. “Do you need a couple more hands on your face, Chloe? I’ve got two free ones?”

Chloe laughs, and for a second, it really feels like all it takes to get her through the dregs of her grief is just enough friendly hands on her face. “Sure,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll find some skin to cover.”

“I’ll just go for your gigantic forehead, there’s enough space for both my hands,” Max says.

“That’s m--” Chloe starts to say, but it’s quickly muffled by Max’s right hand.

For a few seconds, she just sits there and lets herself get lost in the unfamiliar sensation, leaning her head back against the headrest. She feels the pads of Rachel’s thumbs still resting at the corners of her eyes, ready to catch any tears that come, and the palm of Max’s hand over her mouth, her cool fingers on her forehead. Grounding her. It’s good. She’s okay.

Finally, when the cars in front start moving again, she shakes off their hands. When Max refuses to let go, she darts out her tongue and licks a broad stripe across her palm. Max laughs and pulls away to wipe it on Chloe’s flannel, which, fair.

They drive a few more minutes in silence, towards the bright light in the sky. Max gets out her camera, stabilising it against the dashboard, and takes a few pictures. Rachel is on her phone again.

“People are already theorizing,” she announces after a while. “The star wasn’t a likely candidate for a hypernova, and people are wondering where they went wrong in their estimations.”

“They didn’t include Rachel in their calculations, is their mistake,” Chloe says.

“There’s already people saying it’s the new star of Bethlehem. Like it’ll lead them to the new messiah. You know, because we still think celestial bodies can mark a specific location on earth.”

“Oh man, when we get to Seattle there’ll be like three wise men and a thousand journalists waiting at Max’s parents home already, it’s gonna be a fun Christmas.”

“Oh man, I hope I’m not becoming a big sister, that’d suck,” Max says.

“Mainly for Vanessa,” Chloe throws in.

“But also for me.”

“Man, imagine if this is all just signs for the new messiah, and here we are, happily assigning them to ourselves?” Rachel laughs. “Ever met such a self-important group of young people before?”

“I mean, you guys _do_ have secret superpowers. Some amount of self-importance is called for.”

Max spots something outside, leaning forward to get a better look. “Hey, I know that sign. Ten more miles to Seattle.”

“Can’t be more than two hours, then,” Chloe says darkly, even though traffic has dispersed a little.

Max calls her parents to let them know they’ll be there soon. When she hangs up, Chloe asks, on a whim, “Hey, Rachel, what was the name of the star?”

“The what? Oh, the hypernova? Electra.”

“Electra. I thought maybe it’d be something that sounds like your name a bit.”

“Is it in your astrological sign? You’re a - leo?” Max asks, sounding for all it’s worth like someone who has no idea what she’s talking about.

Rachel laughs. “No, it’s not. It’s part of the Pleiades, the constellation named after the seven daughters of Atlas.” She’s got her phone up again, knees propped up and digging into Chloe’s back through the back of her seat.

A few seconds later, she gives a muffled yelp. When Chloe looks at her through the rearview mirror, she’s covered her mouth with her hand. Catching Chloe’s eyes, she lowers her hand and says, “Electra means ‘amber’.”

“There we go, then,” Chloe says, satisfied. It’s as good a confirmation to her as any. She doesn’t need an explanation, at this point. She’s okay with things as they are. She looks at the bright star again, winking. “Amber.” For a split second, she imagines it blinking at her in turn. She decides not to question it.

“You have to take a right soon,” Max announces, not sounding like she cares about the newest revelation all that much.

Maybe it’s been too much. Maybe it really doesn’t matter. Chloe decides to give it time, and lets Max guide her through the outskirts of Seattle.

When they finally come to a halt in front of the house Max’s parents live in, they spend a few minutes in the truck, ostensibly to listen to the rest of the song - _it’s time to come on out, there will be no sign from above -_ but actually because they all feel the moment’s heavy significance.

The end of their road trip, and the beginning of telling their parents.

The cassette in the player rattles to an end, and Max says into the silence, quietly: “I want you guys to know that whatever my parents think of us, it won’t change my mind about you. This - this road trip has meant a lot to me, and you have been so great about it. I keep imagining what it would have been like, with my other Chloe…”

Chloe feels a familiar stab of jealousy at that. It always comes back to the blue-haired Chloe. She knows there’s nothing she can do: What she has on her is nothing she can attain in any meaningful way. Max’s first kiss. The first love of her life. Shared memory of trauma, and the loyalty that comes with it.

“...and I know that I idolize her, but even I can’t deny that coming here with her would have been all kinds of awful. And you have been so kind with me, about my nightmares, about my random negativity whenever I remember something… And I know this is not going away. But I also think, you know… that it’s okay. I’ve got the time. I finally have the time.”

“And we’re not going anywhere,” Rachel says softly.

“We’ve got your back,” Chloe adds.

“And I’ve got yours,” Max says, raising her hand as if to rewind, resulting in Chloe making an aborted motion in her direction. She doesn’t want to lose this moment. Max laughs. “No, I just meant, I would, to help you. Anytime.”

“Literally any time,” Chloe says, because she is a smartass and can’t help it, and Max laughs, because she is a blessing.

“Partners in time?” Rachel says from the backseat. It sounds careful, the way she says it, like the words carry additional meaning.

“Partners in time,” Max confirms, and holds out her hands to both of them, slightly awkward in the car.

Chloe and Rachel take her hands, and she squeezes once, then lets go.

“Okay, gang. Let’s go. Road trip’s over, Christmas is starting.”

And they get out and into the cold night. Rachel takes Chloe’s left hand, and Chloe reaches her right out to Max until Max takes it, and together they go toward the amber light in the sky, toward the house with the warmly lit windows, toward another adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was it - thank you for staying around! I promise I'll get to the comments tomorrow <3


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